For years, R.E.M. promised that their next album would be a rocker, an oath to fans that perhaps made sense during the early '90s, when they were exploring the pastoral fields of Out of Time and the gloomy folk of Automatic for the People, but in the years after Bill Berry's 1997 departure, the desire of longtime fans for the group to ock again was merely a code word for the wish that R.E.M. would sound like a band again. Apart from a few fleeting moments -- "The Great Beyond," their "Man in the Moon" re-write for the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic, Man in the Moon; "Bad Day," a mid-'80s outtake revived for a greatest-hits album -- R.E.M. not only didn't sound like a band, but they seemed at odds with themselves and their very strengths, culminating in the amorphous, mummified Around the Sun, a record so polished and overworked it didn't sound a bit like R.E.M., not even like the art-pop outfit the band turned into after Berry's retirement. It was a situation so dire that the band recognized the need for corrective steering, so they stripped themselves down to bare-bones for 2008's Accelerate.
In every way Accelerate is the opposite of Around the Sun: at 36 minutes, it's defiantly lean, it's heavy on Peter Buck's guitars and Mike Mills backing vocals, its songs don't drift, they attack. Even the songs constructed on acoustics feel like they're rockers, maybe because they hearken back to the eerie, ramshackle grace of "Swan Swan H" whose riff echoes through both "Houston" and "Until the Day Is Done." This is not the only time that R.E.M. deliberately refers to the past on Accelerate, but reverential self-reference is the whole idea of this project: they're embracing their past, building upon the legacy and the very sound of such underground ock landmarks as Lifes Rich Pageant and Document. Not that this album could be mistaken for an exhumed classic from the '80s: Michael Stipe's lyrics are forthright and never elliptical, and the same could be said about the music, as it's sonically streamlined and precise, hallmarks of a veteran band. One of the benefits of being veterans is knowing how to create a record this focused, and Accelerate benefits greatly from its concentrated blast of guitars, as the brevity of the album makes R.E.M. seem vital even as they're dredging up the past. By no longer denying the jangle and pop that provided a foundation for the group's success, they sound like a band again.
Such praise dangerously threatens to oversell Accelerate, however, suggesting that the album has either the unearthly mystique of Murmur or the ragged enthusiasm of Reckoning when it has neither. This is a careful, studied album from a band that knew they were on the brink of losing their audience and, worse, their identity. Accelerate finds R.E.M. attempting to reconnect with their music, with what made them play ock & roll in the first place, instead of methodically resurrecting a faded myth. They reconnect handsomely, creating an album the can stand next to work from their peers, like Dinosaur Jr.'s exceptional comeback Beyond and Sonic Youth's casually vital Rather Ripped (whose "Incinerate" reverberates in the dissonant open-ended "Accelerate"). As comebacks go, that's relatively modest, but the very modesty of Accelerate is what makes it such a successful rebirth as R.E.M. no longer denies what they were or what they are, and, in doing so, they offer a glimpse of what they could be once again.
After four long years of hard and anxious waiting, R.E.M's first album since Around the Sun hits record stores everywhere and although the band experiments with many different music stylings on each song, the album as a whole beats out most of their previous efforts in an instant. The Good : First CD in over [...]
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Madison Square GardenR.E.M. is "pretty much a great live band," Michael Stipe once said (i.e. in our SXSW interview earlier this year). Said words echoed in my head, high expectations pulsed in my veins, as I traipsed in to Madison Square Garden this Thursday.To be concise and admitedly redundant, I'd agree the show was indeed 'great.' But since I'm not one to be a) redundant b) concise and yo...
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REM absolutely roared during their long set at the Mann Music Center on Wednesday night! I'd never seen them before (not sure how that happened), so when the tour began I told my wife we must must must see them. So I bought the tix,,, we figured out a babysitting plan, etc, and were all set. As events transpired however, it turned into just me going and then contacting an old college friend ...
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There's been a lot of hype and publicity because, yes, REM have released a new album. It's their best ever. Or, that's what I am led to believe by everything I read. It's loud! It's rocky! It's better than Around the Sun! And yet.... last time they came out with something loud and rocky, following on from two more melodious albums, REM were slaughtered in the press; hung out to dry; Does anyon...
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After I heard REM’s ‘Accelerate for the first time, I did three things. 1. I looked over my notes and research from the rehearsal shows to see which songs I’d heard before. (About half of them.)2. I listened to some old REM to see where it fit in a big picture of the band.3. I listened to it again.The first is important because the story of this album kind of begins there. The five night re
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Michael Stipe isn't exactly camera shy. To see what I mean check out his doe-eyed mug on "indiepixie's post.":http://mog.com/indiepixie/blog_post/154132Stipe and the rest of R.E.M. will now release the 192 page book R.E.M. HELLO consisting of pictures taken by Seattle-based photographer "David Belisle":http://www.davidbelisle.com/ on June 1st. Of the 192 pages, 175 of them are color and black &...
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Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of Mr. Stipe? Well I've got another clip here from the interview with Michael Stipe during SXSW where Michael Stipe talks about his dreamworld and the song "Sing For The Submarine." Since Accelerate was just released April 1st, it's pretty interesting insight.{PLEASE LINK TO FULL POST TO SEE VIDEO}The beginning of the interview, Michael's eye kinda drift off...
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Madison Square GardenR.E.M. is "pretty much a great live band," Michael Stipe once said (i.e. in our SXSW interview earlier this year). Said words echoed in my head, high expectations pulsed in my veins, as I traipsed in to Madison Square Garden this Thursday.To be concise and admitedly redundant, I'd agree the show was indeed 'great.' But since I'm not one to be a) redundant b) concise and yo...
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R.E.M. is offering a new video for their song "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" off of their soon to be released album ??Accelerate??(Warner Bros.) as a free download at "THIS LOCATION":CH??Cover Art for Accelerate?? There has been a lot of buzz on MOG about R.E.M. in recent days with "Mogger Indiepixie's recent interview with R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe":IP. If you haven't already, be sure t...
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You always hear stories of musicians getting their gear jacked while on the road. Seldom do these stories turn out on a positive note, so R.E.M.'s Peter Buck is one lucky dude. Following an R.E.M. tour stop in Helsinki, Finland on September 9th Buck's prized Rickenbacker guitar went missing. The band is currently on tour in Europe behind their latest album Accelerate. Ten days later Buck was r...
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Didn't see this video posted yet.. The shirt is an annual tradition where the folks at France's famous Polo Shirt spotlight a third party design for thier holiday polo shirt. This year REM frontman Mikchael Stipe was chose to design this cool holiday Tee.
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I've been in Austin, TX for less than 24 hours and I've managed to bump into R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe on the street, rock out to hyped act White Denim and the Minus 5 and catch a ride from coolest Apache Indian/cab driver ever. All this and I haven’t even picked up my badge for the thing. But the craziness that is SXSW and the weirdness that is Austin is only beginning...On my connecting flight t.
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While we were in Italia, hanging at our beach side hotel in Mira and in between sight seeing trips to Roma which is 45 minutes away, Michelle and I would watch MTV. The cool thing about MTV in Europe is unlike in the States they show actual videos. We saw some classic, some new ones and some guilty pleasures.As you might already have known, R.E.M. is huge in Europe. They're bigger and more po...
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After I heard REM’s ‘Accelerate for the first time, I did three things. 1. I looked over my notes and research from the rehearsal shows to see which songs I’d heard before. (About half of them.)2. I listened to some old REM to see where it fit in a big picture of the band.3. I listened to it again.The first is important because the story of this album kind of begins there. The five night re
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Treble's Top 50 Albums of 2008 and my Accelerate review can be found (click here) on treblezine.comR.E.M.AccelerateWarner Bros.2008It's been difficult being an R.E.M. fan during these past few years. When I mention this to friends and music enthusiast amigos they roll their eyes in disgust. Since when did R.E.M. get such a bad rap? Don't tell me it's all backlash because of "Shiny Happy People?...
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REM absolutely roared during their long set at the Mann Music Center on Wednesday night! I'd never seen them before (not sure how that happened), so when the tour began I told my wife we must must must see them. So I bought the tix,,, we figured out a babysitting plan, etc, and were all set. As events transpired however, it turned into just me going and then contacting an old college friend ...
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...because Michael Stipe will be the DJ! Listening to the new REM here and I am loving every note. It sounds to me like a return to classic from, like 'Life's Rich Pageant' era REM.And....MOG won't let me upload it...But I put it here first anyway:http://swill-merchant.blogspot.com/Viva la REM!!
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As promised, the new R.E.M. album Accelerate is available on iLike.com. What's even better is that you can stream the entire album (or individual songs) for free and you don't even need to sign up for anything. iLike also has a new video from Michael Stipe, discussing the new record. Jump over there and watch it, Stipe looks adorable, vaguely like Elvis Costello...http://www.ilike.com/artist...
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I just this second got an e-mail from Warner Music's press office, and thought I'd share. This is the artwork for REM's forthcoming album, 'Accelerate'. I know it's been leaked before - I saw it on Wikipedia last week- but this is 100% official.What do we all think? I like it - I'm seeing 'Automatic' meets 'Revolver'.
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"Yesterday we found out":http://mog.com/Sonic_Agent/blog_post/139456?from=latest_news that the video for R.E.M.'s first single, "Supernatural Serious," off their new album Accelerate, was filmed at a sex shop in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Today we are blessed with the rest of the titles to tracks off the band's new album. R.E.M. worked on the follow-up to 2004's Around The Sun with producer J...
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Living Well Is the Best Revenge |
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| 2 Man-Sized Wreath |
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| 3 Supernatural Superserious |
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| 4 Hollow Man |
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| 5 Houston |
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| 6 Accelerate |
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| 7 Until the Day Is Done |
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| 8 Mr. Richards |
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| 9 Sing for the Submarine |
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| 10 Horse to Water |
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| 11 I'm Gonna DJ |
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 "Accelerate")
