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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > April > 02 > Entry
CD Review: R.E.M. “Accelerate”
“Accelerate” (Warner Bros.)
The “back to basics” album is a rite of passage for rockers closer to 50 than 25. Neil Young’s 1990 album “Ragged Glory” made him Pearl Jam’s peer at the age of 45. U2’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” reunited the band with the soaring sound of its youth as the band members hovered around 40. Sonic Youth’s 2006 “Rather Ripped” features the band’s strongest songs-qua-songs in years; lead Sonic Thurston Moore was 48 then.
“Accelerate” falls into this category, 11 songs stuffed into 34 minutes made by guys in their mid-to-late-40s who have been playing in this band the majority of their lives. It’s full of Peter Buck’s all-time fuzziest riffs, Mike Mills’ simplest bass lines and Michael Stipe yelping about talking points he’s resisted, TV he’s fed up with and critics he’s disputed. Or something.
It’s not just the band’s first rockin’ album in years, it’s also the first rocker since surreally underrated drummer Bill Berry left the band in 1997. The loss was instantly felt. R.E.M.’s subsequent albums “Up” (1998), “Reveal” (2000) and the nearly-band-destroying “Around the Sun” (2004) tried to fill the gap with session guys, drum machines and oblique songcraft. (“Accelerate” employs road drummer Bill Rieflin and he’s a pro.) Fans and critics weren’t buying it (literally, in the case of “Around the Sun,” which sold about 250,000 copies).
They’ve never really been able to shake the impression that R.E.M. became a project band the minute Berry left, three guys making records that never seem like cash-ins (they probably would have been less experimental if they were) and playing tours that fans enjoy. Now the music and the band seems utterly denuded of the myth that once powered both. Listening to “Accelerate,” it’s tough to remember that they were once the most influential (and reviled and discussed and imitated) band in the American underground.
One can forgive Buck from reaching into the old-trick bag (“Hollow Man” could be from anywhere in their career), but it really doesn’t help that for a lead singer, Stipe is an excellent movie producer. His voice is kind of shot, that famous mumble and keen replaced with a small, emotionally flattened bleat. He sounds like he can barely keep up with the mach-speed “Living Well is the Best Revenge” and “Spernatural Superserious.” Even the post-Katrina ballad “Houston” sounds weak, and all that fuzz and pluck and Jackknife Lee’s dense production can’t cover for him. And can’t cover for the fact that this sounds like another project from three guys who used to be in R.E.M. I’m sure the tour will be fine.
(Michael Stipe of R.E.M. performs at last month’s SXSW festival. Photo by Jay Janner/American-Statesman)
Comments
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By Tim
April 3, 2008 12:37 PM | Link to this
This does sound like R.E.M, not just a left over project. I think it rank up there with a couple of their weaker albums from the Berry era, but no it’s not a return to the height of their form.