Back in the Mog and back with R.E.M.

Posted about 1 year ago

Artist:
- PLAY
R.E.M.
Album:
- PLAY
- QUEUE
Accelerate

Cripes, I have no excuse for not writing. But now, after hearing a bunch of new music seeing a bunch of bands, I've got a Mog backlog. So now I'm going to make up for it. I'll start with an easy, yet possibly provocative item:Holy crap, I really like this new R.E.M. album!I mean, I like it possibly more than -any- R.E.M. album, and it's definitely better than anything in at least 10 years. And it's largely because - as Stephen Colbert pointed out when the band visited his show - there's not a mandolin to be found on this recording. It's all big guitars, and it rocks. R.E.M. had become one of those bands I wanted to still like, but their music just stopped hitting me in the gut. I gave up on them somewhere around Monster (and, in retrospect, the earlier "Shiny Happy People" and "Stand" make me queasy now too). But Accelerate? It's great power pop, like stuff from the '90s. Totally compelling and honest. I can believe again.

Comments (3)

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deadmandeadman says **But Accelerate? It's great power pop, like stuff from the '90s. Totally compelling and honest. I can believe again.** I have to agree with 99% of what you say, and yet.......honest? There are times through-out the cd when it feels like the look backward is......not forced, but...studied, perhaps. It certainly is the most satisfying cd from the band in a long time. But I think **New Adventures In Hi-Fi** got unfairly overlooked.

Permalink posted 04/05/2008
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hawaiianpunch says I totally agree. I didn't want to like this album. I wanted to analyze it as another misstep in their decline from Rock Heaven. But..... Like you say their music didn't do in the last ten years or so, this one really hit me in the gut. From the first song, "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" the guitars charge in and never let me go. I dare say I love REM again. I agree about Monster not getting me like I thought it would, especially after the great Automatic for the People, but I have to disagree about "Stand". Only because it was the song that got me into REM in the first place and it's a sing-songy pop nugget that is placed in a great album that is "Green". I just wish they go back to more of that two-part harmony between Mike Mills and Michael Stipe like they used to.

Permalink posted 04/05/2008
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tjayfowler says Oh man do I ever want to like this one. I'm a Green and pre-Green, and Green Green the Rushes Grow guy myself. I've held off my morbid curiosity for this one. Dan, do you promise that I wont be disappointed?

Permalink posted 04/07/2008