As a three-legged dog, R.E.M. has, for the most part, succeeded in surviving the near-devastating departure of founding member and drummer Bill Berry more than a decade ago. In the decade leading to this, the group’s fourth post-Berry and 14th overall studio album have yielded one great effort in 1998 with Up and two average ones with Reveal in 2001 and Around the Sun three years later.
These three records marked a progressive deviation from the unique sound, leading some to call the group a pioneer of alternative rock to a nearly constant mid-tempo, polished sheen that had some fans and critics screaming “mid-life crisis.”
Even guitarist Peter Buck himself has expressed publicly his distaste for Around the Sun, which arguably received the weakest critical reception of any album in the R.E.M. catalogue.
Hence, the band saw the need to get it right this time. Gone are the slow-burning, overlong, filler-stuffed sets that bogged down recent records and made the performers themselves sound old and tired.
This modest, 35-minute offering contains several clear attempts from the group to turn up the amplifiers and create more concise arrangements that portray a sense of urgency it seemed to lack since Berry’s departure.
Naturally, Buck, bassist/multi-instrumentalist Mike Mills and lead vocalist/chief lyricist Michael Stipe needed side musicians to make the guitar-driven approach possible. Drummer Bill Rieflin and “fifth member” Scott McCaughey, among others, have filled these roles admirably. Rieflin doesn’t try too hard to sound just like Berry, but his style blends in with the group’s, and he proves to be a worthy replacement.
Musically, the trio from Athens, Ga., appears to be employing the guitar-heavy recording approach it used liberally on its two mid-90s albums Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. The pacing, however, is much quicker than anything the group has tried to tackle since signing on to Warner Bros. Records some 20 years ago.
“Living Well is the Best Revenge” and “Man-Sized Wreath” open the album with a surprising amount of energy and find the group rocking much harder and sounding much younger than it ever has as a trio, while “Supernatural Superserious” is effective as a single with its jangly guitars and memorable hook.
Not all the arrangements are as memorable. “Hollow Man,” for example, is quite a generic operation. It leads you to believe it is slow and piano-oriented at first before jumping into 1990s generic alternative rock cruise control. “Horse to Water” sounds like a B-side from the sessions of the already average Monster, while Stipe sounds strained and apathetic on the dreadful album closer “I’m Gonna DJ.”
More often than not, however, the group delivers. “Houston” and “Sing For the Submarine” stand out from anything else on the album in terms of quality and uniqueness. Mike Mills once again adds the right touches to the waltz-oriented “Houston” with his tasteful organ work, and “Sing for the Submarine,” despite being the album’s longest-playing track at nearly five minutes in length, flows well. Even more straightforward rockers such as the album’s title track and “Mr. Richards” showcase some of band’s strongest moments since Up.
Lyrically, Stipe is usually on target; it seems he has a lot on his mind these days. “If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will,” Stipe reflects on “Houston.” His anger continues to be evident throughout the album, particularly on “Until the Day is Done,” where he so eloquently opines on the current state of affairs in the US of A. “The battle’s been lost, the war is not won/ An added republic, a bitter refund/ the business first flat earthers licking their wounds/ The verdict is dire; the country’s in ruins.”
Despite his prowess, he falls short of the mark at times, bordering on triteness with such garbage as “If death is pretty final, I’m collected vinyl/ I’m gonna DJ at the end of the world!” and “I hold my breath, I come around, round round/ It’s going down, down, down/ This runaround, round, round/ Is about to pound/ The living daylights out of you!” Fortunately, Stipe has enough substance in most of what he’s written on his album to outweigh his occasional transgressions.
Many critics are labeling Accelerate as a return to form. That’s fine, but in what respect? R.E.M. has taken many forms in its long history.
It drew its initial identity as an eclectic, punk-folk underground radio mainstay known for its quirky and mysterious frontman before morphing into a less abstract, more guitar-driven vehicle seen on Life’s Rich Pageant and Document through which Stipe accepted the spotlight and refined his approach for more clarity.
Then Buck unplugged for a few years, and the acoustic-folk version of R.E.M. proved to be the most popular. After revisiting arena rock for two albums and enduring Berry’s retirement, the group entered a period of contemporary rock limbo.
So begs the question: to which form does R.E.M. return on Accelerate? A new-and-improved, more concise version of Monster seems a reasonable starting point, simply because it shares the electric presence previously heard during the group’s arena rock stage. It indisputably captures the group in prove-yourself mode, running purely on adrenaline and no longer on star power.
Indeed, it is the group’s strongest product in 10 years, although not without its flaws. While not as strong as critics will lead you to believe, there’s still enough substance here for Buck, Mills and Stipe to convince long-term fans that they’re still relevant and worthy of the challenge to remain as such.