It seems impossible for anyone to address the new REM album, 'Accelerate', without looking back with much derision on the bands post-Bill Berry output. It would be naive to believe that REM found working as a trio easy after drummer Berry quit in 1997. For many, the band has never been the same - the studio dynamic had floundered and communication, if we are to believe what we read, grew colder by the record between Mills, Buck and Stipe. Whatever went on in the studio, live on stage is where REM has prospered since Berry's departure. Tours in '99, '03 and '05 cemented them as one of the best live acts in the planet. Despite this, they were selling less and less each record they released. The days of the ten million shifting 'Out of Time' and 'Automatic For The People' albums were long gone. This culminated in 2004's pre-dominantly flat 'Around The Sun' selling two million records worldwide.
Personally I quite liked many of REM's forays into electronica that spring up on the post-Berry albums. We should not forget gems like 'I've Been High', 'Falls To Climb', 'Walk Unafraid', 'The Lifting', 'Saturn Return', 'Electron Blue' and quality REM standard fare such as 'At My Most Beautiful', 'All The Way To Reno', 'Leaving New York', 'Imitation of Life' and 'The Great Beyond' - all classics from a so-called 'difficult' period. It's too easy to dismiss REM's last decade. Yes, those albums have their weak points - they were too fecking long for one - but they all have their moments of greatness, even 'Around The Sun', possibly REM's weakest album so far.
The duration aspect is something that 'Accelerate' deals with in dramatic fashion, running at just 35 minutes it's REM's shortest album in 24 years - 1984's 'Reckoning' in fact.
Is 'Accelerate' is the sound of REM retreating back to the tried and tested? Opening tracks 'Living Well is the Best Revenge', 'Man-Sized Wreath' and single 'Supernatural Superserious' charge with a momentum not realised since the opening to the 1986 album 'Life's Rich Pageant'. But with producer Jacknife Lee at the helm replacing Pat McCarthy, who the band has worked with since 1998, the songs sound dry and live, with little of the lushness that sprayed their most recent albums evident at all. 'Hollow Man' appropriately see's Stipe deliver an untouched hoarse vocal inbetween a chorus so infectuous it's destined for constant airplay if the track gains the 'single' status it obviously deserves.
'Accelerate' hits it's high points in the uptempo moments like those adressed above. Where it falters oddly is where REM prospered so beautifully at one point in their career - the acoustic moments. 'Houston' is a nothing track that offers little apart from perhaps an interesting organ. 'Until The Day is Done' is the kind of acoustic ballad that sounded so rich in the hands of REM in the early 90s, but just sounds tired and formulaic at this stage in their career. These are not the moments to get excited about on 'Accelerate'. 'Horse To Water' brings back the momentum the acoustic moments lost. With the celebratory tempo of early classic 'Just a Touch' 'Horse To Water' is a stand-out track destined to be a live highlight. It sounds like the REM of the past and the present - rocking hard, a great chorus and the unmistakable Mike Mills backing vocal. The tempo thankfully is maintained right up until the end, such is the 'hit and run' nature of the album. 'I'm Gonna DJ' closes the short but effective album. A regular live track on the band's 2005 tour, it's jaunty, juvenile and chaotic but very much in keeping with the rest of the album, making it the perfect closer for what REM have set out to achieve with 'Accelerate'.
Have they achieved their goal? Well yes, but not without some filler with the acoustic tracks. It's a fine album but not as good as some are making out, just as 'Up' and 'Reveal' are not as bad as those same people probably make out. As a life-long REM fan I'm just glad to hear them making great music still and if the critics think it's now ok again to like REM then whatever, welcome back guys!
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