Accelerate

It's only missing Bill Berry... The band turned back the clock about 15 years, Stipe got angry and Buck plugged in and turned it up. I'd really lost track of my old favorite band the last 3 or 4 albums since BB left. They seemed pretty self-absorbed and experimentally moody in their efforts. Glad I took the leap on this one. Overall, the tone and tempo reminds me of Monster or Life's Rich Pageant.

I've been an REM fan for a long time. "Green" came out during my freshman year of high school and I latched onto that album in that special way only a young kid just getting into music can. I played that tape (remember those?) in my Walkman damn near every day and I memorized every line and every riff. Things got even better as I started digging into their 80s back catalog, and I really enjoyed the next couple of albums they put out. Then they started to... well ... they became mediocre. Everything after "Automatic for the People" sounded like either a failed experiment or a re-tread of something they had already done better. "Accelerate" finally gets them back on track. No, it's not as good as "Life's Rich Pageant," but it's the best thing they've done in years and the first REM album since 1992 that I've really been able to get into. If you're one of the many people who (understandably) wrote them off years ago, it may be time to give them one more shot.

R.E.M.: Accelerate - Welcome Back R.E.M.! Much like how; Aerosmith, Pearl Jam and Flamming Lips all had to reinvent themselves to become relevant again, R.E.M. must have reflected deeply upon their extensive library and decided to become rather vengeful, once again.
This album seems to have already caught headlines from every magazine that circulates the globe and from each a relatively positive, if not overwhelmingly positive, review. If you haven't read one of these review, then maybe you've noticed pictures of the band or lead singer, Michael Stipe, on a cover. This sort of publicity is almost impossible to buy for the majority of bands, but for R.E.M. it's just life as usual when they actually try on an album.
So what do I mean when spouting out words like, "reinventing, relevant and try?" That's easy to answer, listen to the album once and you'll know what I mean. And this won't take much time, because this is R.E.M.'s shortest album that they've ever recorded, coming in at under 35 minutes. So short of a time-span that it can only fit 11 tracks, which makes the album only one track longer than the shortest tracked album of 10. There's no clean computerized synthesizer or inexplicably, impossible-without-studio, cuts. Accelerate, is simply an album that was written out of pure neurotic explosion, and equally by each individual member. The base guitar bounces around playfully, sounds wonderful and not drowned-out like bands from the 2000's, the guitar is fast and full of rhythm similar to a more youthful R.E.M. of ole and the drums again bang away, even though without longtime drummer, Bill Berry, Ministry's Bill Rieflin fills the roll perfectly - we're not talking nuclear science with R.E.M.'s drumming, but that still doesn't make Bill Rieflin an honorary member, yet. So the basics, which speak volumes, are all present for the making of a modern-classic, but what do the vocals sound like, are the lyrics personable and does the album hold up?
When I first listened to, Accelerate, I instantly enjoyed the music, but thought there was something amiss. The further I dove into the album, the more I realized that the music was great, but that the vocals were a little off. Sure, it sounded like Mike, but still, he didn't sound as convicted as usual, almost as if the music was faster-paced than he could handle. And so I listened, and listened and listened some more to this album (as I do now with most albums) and what I came up with was that this is just the theme of the album mixed-in with a little with Stipe's age. But overall, this is signature R.E.M. sound, it just takes week's worth of radioplay to be addicting. And you know what the thing is, this album consists of a lot of repeatable & memorable material, most of which fans might have forgot R.E.M. was capable of composing.
So now that I've finally gotten a grasp of what might take the average listener an estimated 3 weeks of listening to, I'm willing to stand firm on saying this album is damn good. The lyrics, nothing new to R.E.M.; personal, political, a little coded but also could be interpreted as ultra-direct. While I've heard comments that mention, "Man on the Moon-ish," I lean towards an album with songs that range between a mix of, "Drive," "The One I Love," and variations of yes, material from, Monster, specifically, "Star 69." I actually enjoy most of the album, and respect the fact that I didn't love it on first spin, because it most definitely takes time to grow on you, but when you get there, it's oh so rewarding. One thing



Album Highlights: All of it - minus "I'm Gonna DJ"

Rating 9.5 out of 10

The rumors are not exaggerated, REM is dead. There is absolutely nothing on "Accelerate" to get excited about. Despite the promise of acceleration we get plodding numbers whose acceleration is only towards the absurd and banal - check out "Sing For The Submarine" as a prime example.

Worse than all is "Until The Day is Done" which despite all good intentions sounds as if it was written by Richie Sambora with members of The Moody Blues (like a weird, ugly, unwanted child of "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Nights in White Satin").

To make matters worse, the production, by someone whose moniker is "Jacknife Lee", excites about as much as U2's "How To Disable An Atomic Bomb", The Hives' "Black and White Album" and that unimportant Snowpatrol album he worked on, which is to say not at all.

No band shaped my life more than R.E.M. One of the greatest American rock bands of all time. And there are no harsher critics than those who love. So . . .

My favorite R.E.M. albums are Murmur, Automatic, and New Adventures, which to this day remains mystifyingly underrated. I love Up. Reveal to me was a collection of solid songs that was absolutely ruined by over production. I think I side with Peter Buck in my opinion of that album. And Around the Sun took a full solar year to get through, it felt.

With Accelerate the are once again rocking, but as one reviewer put it, brevity isn't to be confused with intensity. Living Well is the Best Revenge and Horse to Water are the best tracks in my opinion, and I also love Mr. Richards. Houston sounded great the first three listens but got old quickly. Sing for the Submarine - sort of a low point on the album. But I'm still praying that R.E.M. will crank out a few more songs equal of my favorites, which always seem to be songs that the radio stations miss:

Half a World Away
Sweetness Follows
Let Me In
Leave
New Test Leper
Lotus
Hairshirt
Swan Swan H