R.E.M. – Accelerate
Well, it really is mainstream indie rock week so far on Song, by Toad isn’t it? The Raconteurs, Supergrass, Elbow… crikey anyone would think I’d lost what little edge I ever had.
Well one of the reasons for this is because after last year’s debacle for major releases, some of the mainstream stuff this year has been really pretty good. And REM, amazingly, are in fact one of the best of the lot. After the mediocre Reveal and the utterly lifeless garbage that was Around the Sun I had pretty much given up on ever hearing anything great from REM ever again. Almost all bands eventually slip into a comfortable semi-retirement, accompanied by the creative equivalent a nice cuppa and much on some Rich Tea biscuits, and I reckoned that point had arrived in about 1999 for the lads from Georgia.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, because this really is an excellent record. Stipe has apparently called it their best ever, although I can’t find the quote anywhere, and although I would certainly stop some way short of that, it is indubitably their best album for years, and a superb achievement for a band who seemed to have slipped into a musical coma.
I remember writing a review of the last Stones album A Bigger Band in which I described what critics were bafflingly calling that ubiquitous Blistering Return to Form thus:
I’m tempted to say that this will appeal to older Stones fans who want to enjoy the old Stones one last time before they vanish, and this seems to almost be what they themselves are thinking.
That record sounded almost like The Stones covering The Stones, and it could perhaps be argued that this REM album has a touch of that – a band trying to sound how they used to sound in order to recapture what made them great. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say it, but I think it would be harsh. Feted past or otherwise, most of these songs stand up forcefully on their own, and it would be an injustice to condescend to them in that way.
I am not saying that this album is flawless. It sags a little in the middle, but just as you think that songs like Hollow Man and Accelerate are part of a downward slide into middle-aged stodge, salvation arrives in the form of Until the Day is Done and the splendid Mr. Richards. Again, these songs are peaks in a record that is a little uneven, but by and large I think this is fantastic, and I am bloody delighted because I thought they were finished.
REM – Living Well is the Best Revenge
REM – Until the Day is Done
They’re not having this one either, apparently. It’s so sad. You watch these people, presumably all grown adults who know better, thrashing about pathetically in a job that basically tries to deny the onset of the 21st Century and it eventually just becomes pitiful. I knew this was a risk when posting about famous bands but I am genuinely saddened at this sort of childlike, blinkered attitude to the real world. It is the equivalent of the church trying to deny the King James Bible at the advent of the printing press, when suddenly the Word of God, of which they had hitherto been the sole guardians, became available to the general public. They are just clownish buffoons who will be utterly obsolete within a couple of years, but Christ they’re a nuisance at the moment.
Hmm. Not bad. I sort of blew this off because I recall shaking my head ruefully after hearing the last REM “return to form,” a little steaming turd of a record called Reveal. This sounds better. However, Murmur through Document is one of the great 5-record streaks in pop music history. I’ll always love REM for those records. The soundtrack to my youth.
Yoinks. Hath the snaggletoothed record label grumpy fuckers come a-calling & threatened, in a polite but lawyer-based firm way, should the tracks remain available?
I think the terminology was along the lines of ‘take these songs down or we’ll bum-rape your first born live on national television’. Or some such.
I saw this one before I saw the Web Shitarse comment on The Raconteurs’ post. I bet he* still tries to see if he can bend enough to suck his own vagina desolate cock.
*I’m guessing it’s a ‘he’ because, like forensic accountancy, this kind of self-satisfying, fantasy Private Investigator employment only ever really attracts pathetically sad, living with mum at age 45, route to & from work goes past the junior school, dyed in the wool cunts.
Well I suppose it’s the equivalent of not wanting your songs played on radio, except for the digital age. But I don’t really feel like I need REM’s approval for the benefit of this site, so fuck them.
Well, I was actually going to buy Accelerate on the strength of this review. Now I won’t.
Well done, web sheriff. You suck whole fat yummy elephant dicks.
Sympathies toad, they did it to me a couple of months ago too on the basis that I had posted a couple of Hot Chip tracks. At least the ‘Without Prejudice’ letters are better than the RIAA who got in contact with my file provider before me.
Tossers!
Ed
What a complete shower of hopeless wankers Web Sherriff are.
I might be inclined to stick up for Messrs. Buck, Mills and Stipe in this instance though, as I doubt they would personally object. Don’t forget they insisted that the album was available for free on Facebook (via iLike) for some time before its general release.
Which brings us back to the album itself.
Isn’t it fucking ace?!
Okay, so it is REM doing REM, but what’s wrong with that?
It beats the band’s approach to the last few albums which – while they each had occasional wonderful moments (Even Around The Sun had the wide-eyed and gorgeous Electron Blue) – have really been REM doing music from airline adverts.
C&B: bollocks to Web Sherriff, go get the album. You won’t be disappointed.
It features the band’s best album-opener since Begin The Begin in <Living Well’s The Best Revenge. Peter Buck attacks the rusty strings of his oldest guitar with shards of corrugated iron, Mike Mills has had extra octaves fitted to his bass (No-one else owns a bass that goes that high – and that means no-one else could play that thrilling bass guitar passage at the beginning of each verse.) and Michael Stipe wails his way through a vocal that leaves you in palpatations, feeling a bit like when your alarm clock goes off in the middle of a deep dream. REM haven’t sounded this alive since they signed to Warner’s.
Next up, Man SIzed Wreath is more of the same in terms of dynamics, but whereas Living Well… runs at you and delivers a flying headbut to the bridge of your nose, the second track swaggers up all cocky-like, flipping the finger and spitting at old ladies. That is, until the sweetener of the chorus, four or five Mike Millses providing ethereal backing vocal harmonies.
Regrettably, the next track, the lead-off single, is shit. It’s just lazy, dull and boring. It’s a mid-paced pop song from the Man On The Moon, Imitation Of Life mould. It doesn’t go anywhere. The lyrics have no meter, the music is no more than the old three-chord trick, everyone sounds half-asleep. It’s the only time on the album I reach for the track-skip button.
Fortunately we’re back on track for Hollow Man, which opens with some worrying piano chords, worrying because they’re reminiscent of Snowplay or Cold Patrol. Luckily Peter Buck is on hand to nip this in the bud before it goes too far, and gives the song a good kick up the backside with some big crunchy guitar chords as the chorus launches, and everything from there drops into place nicely.
The album then turns into Automatic For The People for a little while. I’m told Houston is Michael Stipe forgiving the state of Texas for producing the Bush family of presidents and their hangers-on; a noble sentiment. The song is made up of layers of tinkling mandolins, acoustic guitars and wheezing pump organs. It’s REM by numbers, to be honest, but it’s comfortable and sounds good. However it is enhanced by a thrilling deep drone sound that pops up now and again, which I think is an e-bow on a bass guitar. Whatever it is, it sounds like a foghorn and gives the song a clear identity.
The title track rattles along on a breathless sixteen-beat, underpinned with pile-driving bass, chainsaw guitar and, later in the song, a string section which, forgive the cliché, sweeps. This song hasn’t fared well in many reviews, but I love it.
We’re back on Automatic For The People for more minor-key mandolins and acoustic guitars on Until The Day Is Done. There’s even a waltz-beat in case you’d been missing it. Perhaps it’s depressing that Stipe’s lyric – at odds with the government and the general state of things – could have come from 1992 or 2008. An instantly familiar song, but not without its charms.
Mr. Richards is what Monster should have sounded like. It’s all overdriven guitars and hip-swinging swagger, but the melody has a chilled-out, late-60s, west-coast, almost hippy vibe. You can even imagine a sitar making an appearance on some parts. It’s a good little song which perhaps would have benefited from more care and imagination in the arrangement, but it works nonetheless.
Song For The Submarine is another that has divided opinions, this time for its prog leanings. Perhaps Genesis could have done something like this around their The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway period. All I’ll say is that if they had, it would have been more than four-and-a-half minutes long.
Phew, we’re back to crotch-thrusting, eye-bulging, gobbing punk rock for Horse To Water. I’m sure there’s a bit in there where’s he’s singing “mother-fuck-cunt” about something. Which is cool.
The album goes out on I’m Gonna DJ. “Death is pretty final, I’m collecting vinyl” asserts Stipe, letting us know that, while he intends to DJ at the end-of –the-world party, he’s not quite ready to go just yet. It’s a bit of a throwaway novelty song, but it’s better than Agadoo, and there are some delicious rhyming couplets in there, so I’m happy with it.
So yeah, that’s barely half-an hour of your listening life in a nutshell. Did I mention that hardly any songs break the three minute barrier? It’s certainly an efficient record with little flab or filler (Other than the abominable third track).
The recurring theme of revisiting the band’s history with both lyrical and musical motifs from their back-catalogue may be a sly dig at the nay-sayers who slagged off their last few ‘experimental’ albums, or it may turn out to be a great band bidding us adieu. Either way it’s not by accident, and it’s the subtle glue that holds a simply brilliant album together.
No one does REM like REM. It’s good to have them back.
I’ve ballsed-up a couple of HTML tags in there Matthew, any chance of tidying them up for me? I’ll owe you a G&T!
Erm, may I agree to read this tomorrow? Mad as a fish – you’ll fit in perfectly around here.