Accelerate


If someone wrote a computer programme designed to produce perfect facsimiles of REM’s mid-to-late 80’s output, it’s fair to say that whatever it produced would sound almost exactly like “Accelerate”. For all the talk of REM’s 14th album in twenty five years being a stunning return to form, it’s more honest to say that the album is not a grand return to form (one could argue that REM have never had a shite phase, and thus have no ‘form’ to return to), but another step in the bands evolution. After all, if this album were an extra half hour long, it would be the same length as “New Adventures In Hi Fi” or “Up”, and probably contain as many dead spots as those records inevitably do. After all, more is often less, and brevity is something that recent REM records have not enjoyed : most of them could have been improved by taking out a song or two.

After slowly travelling down a evolutionary path that saw them refine and replicate their past work to the point of near parody, REM found themselves in an uneviable position of preaching only to the converted : the last album “Around The Sun” was the sound of three millionaires sitting on expensive couches noodling away their talents in favour of heartfelt but tuneless dirge essays about war politics.

Thankfully “Accelerate” is much better than that : it opens with a roar reminiscent of the IRS years “These Days”, Stipe’s breathless, can’t-get-the-words-out-for-the-urgency vocals is backed up by the sound of the band playing together in a room : a world away from the previous, sterile record. If anything, “Accelerate” is the sound of reaction : the sound of troops pouring in, the sound of a spurned lover seeking revenge, the sound of a kick back against whatever it was. Living Well Is The Best Revenge, indeed.

Sonically, this lean beast (at a mere 34 minutes) is the bastard offspring of “Monster” and “New Adventures In Hi-Fi“, full of biting, cathartic guitars that exist seemingly to blast through the cobwebs of life, of soaring Mike Mills backing vocals, full of Stipe’s trademarked obtuse lyrics (though this time shoehorned through the breathless rasp of their best work, where the voice becomes another instrument instead of a liberal lecturer on a hunger strike - think an album made of pissed off glam rock versions of “Ignoreland“). In fact, by REM standards, this barrage of noise desperately needs breathing space. And a ballard of two may just do the trick.

Sadly, even the albums superior ballads - “Houston” and “Mr Richards” - are over in three minutes, and before they get half-way through have transformed from reminders of REM‘s unfairly maligned wildness years 1998-2006 into a morass of guitar pedals and assertive, vocal drumming from former Ministry / Revolting Cocks sticksman Bill Rieflin. “Houston” - the closest living relative to 1996’s epic, seven minute “Leave” would previously have unfurled to enormous proportions : here it is quietly suffocated after a couple of minutes, a song half-formed, snuffed out at birth : at the precise point any other band would add a solo, chorus, verse and chorus again, R.E.M. throw this baby out alongside the alt.folk bathwater.

In one respect, this is as fierce and direct as REM have ever been - less angular that 89‘s warrior “Green“, nor as shy as the agrophobic, role-playing stance of “Monster“ - but to the experienced listener, in some ways this surfeit of fast material exists almost as an exerecise. In the same way that a film with a lot of explosions sometimes uses the trick of spectacle and the loud bang to cover for the fact that at the heart of it there is nothing, I find it hard to believe that “Accelerate” will stand up to years of repeated listening the way the more considered and stately might.

“Supernatural Superserious” is allegedly their best single in years : to these ears it’s a competent and melodic rock song with a chorus that reminds me of Lisa Simpson’s poetry. It’s good, but affected in the way that most of “Monster” was - affecting a stance and playing a role. “Hollow Man” starts well, but is soon bludgeoned by breakneck bludgeon riffola, as if the band are on a mission to destroy all quiet moments on the record. One can imagine the band huddled around, improvising a gentle and beautiful melody before Peter Buck remembers they’re meant to rock and starts grafting on walls of MBV feedback. Wait!, the guitars say, we’re meant to be loud. BUZZBUZZBUZZ.

The title track itself sounds like “Circus Envy” with all the words and music played backwards. But then they play “Until The Day Is Done” which is as beautiful a piece of work as anything they’ve done in the past decade, and almost everything is forgiven.

This is not to sat that “Accelerate” is any bad thing. It certainly isn’t : fans clamouring for a return of REM to their long lost IRS years template, or their “Monster” era affectations will find plenty of worth in the new album. For me, whose seen REM evolve over the past twenty years from provincial town halls and student vinyl to a stadium filling ballade ring behemoth, “Accelerate” feels like a sidestep, a pose, a creative reinvention/revertion designed to reclaim imaginary lost ground that half obscures the bands true intentions. Fundamentally, there is a risk that REM have traded longevity and depth for the briefly satisfying thrill of feedback and the squall of a Marshall Amp. Ultimately, it’s too early to tell if “Accelerate” is an artistic folly or a broken-bone reset of a record that enables REM to reinvent, rethink, REM themselves again. Whatever it is, this brief star of an album is something that I feel is worthy of a high place in the bands body of work and may very well show itself over time to be a late-period masterpiece. Not just another REM album.
- posted by Mark @ 10:23 pm