REM :: Accelerate
It’s a big day here at REV HQ as one of our favorite bands has released a brand new record. Accelerate is REM’s 14th studio album and the party line seems to indicate that it is the much ballyhooed “return to form” effort. Read all the reviews and the pre-release hype and you’ll get pretty much the same arc: for those of you who took a sabbatical from the band the last few years, while they figured out how to carry on without drummer Bill Berry and released a string of mediocre, inconsequential records, it’s finally safe to come back. Recent interviews with Michael Stipe and Peter Buck even have the band members themselves somewhat owning up to the relative shortcomings of their recent recorded output.
So Accelerate is touted to be the record where REM have regained their focus. But is it?
Perhaps I’m not the best person to answer that question, as I actually swim against the critical tide (and apparently to a certain degree the band themselves) in regards Accelerate’s most immediate predecessors. I actually would rank the band’s first post-Berry album, 1998’s Up, among their very best. I find 2001’s Reveal to be a fascinating exercise in the art of studio-as-an-instrument. And I’ll admit it: I really enjoyed 2004’s Around The Sun. Ok…so I can’t adequately refute any of the common criticisms levied against ATS; much of the album does in fact sound like a band sleepwalking and forgetting its identity. But I think it’s more a matter of unfortunate production and arrangement choices. The songs are actually there; the guys just had a few bad days at work. We’ve all had those, right?
So, once again, I’m probably not the person to ask if you want an honest assesment of whether or not Accelerate succeeds in making REM “relevant” again. The fact is I know I’m going to listen to this album until I find things to appreciate and enjoy, much as I did with Around The Sun. The only question really is how long this will take and what role this album will ultimately serve in what is one of my most favorite musical legacies.What follows now are my earliest impressions of Accelerate, having now finally heard the album from beginning to end for the first time.
As much as it pains me to admit, I must parrot the partyline to certain degree: there *is* an intangible quality to the album that gives it a much more urgent and, for lack of a better word, living quality. The sound is of a band renewed and full of energy. Uptempo rockers rule the roost here, with Peter Buck’s guitars pushed deeper into the red than ever before. If there is an antecedent in the band’s catalog, it’s in the louder, faster moments from 1996’s New Adventures In Hifi (ie, “Wake Up Bomb”, “Bittersweet Me”, “So Numb, So Fast”, “Binky the Doormat”)– no real surprise as the band’s relatively fast working methods for Accelerate most closely resemble the written-on-tour/recorded-at-soundcheck approach taken with New Adventures.
Further kindreds can certainly be found in the more recent pair of new songs recorded for 2003’s best of compilation In Time, “Bad Day” and “Animal”. (One wonders, by the way, how Around The Sun might have fared with the caffiene-injection of those two songs?)
If I anticipate any potential pitfalls with Accelerate it’s that many of its most memorable and immediately noteworthy moments seem to simply recall earlier, more storied moments in the band’s career. There’s a fear that in the band’s effort to “return to form” they may have found themselves on a bit of a treadmill. That certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but say this for Up, Reveal and Around The Sun: at least there was an effort, at times considerable, to push the band into new realms and sonic territory. Accelerate sounds like a band retreating safely to its comfort zone.
For now though I am going to push those fears and reservations aside and simply enjoy the process of getting to know a new batch of songs from one of my favorite bands. I’ll share with you my two immediate, first-spin favorites.
“Mr. Richards” is perhaps the album’s most melodic moment. Imagine Green’s “Turn You Inside Out” (see what I mean?) recast with Beatlesque melodies. Then there’s “Horse To Water”, a song that sounds like it may have been written two minutes before it was recorded and sounds all the better for it. It’s as close to 70’s NYC punk as REM has ever sounded. I also like to think that Stipe’s venemous lyrics are addressed to the recent critics of the band, those who have the gall to tell the band what type of album they *should* be making. “I am not that easy, I am not your horse to water…”
REM, Accelerate (Warner Brothers, 2008)
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Mr. Richards
Horse To Water
Supernatural Superserious, Video