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Racing Against Time

Alt rock’s inconsistent elders floor it to the fountain of youth BY JOSH MODELL
R.E.M.
Accelerate ½

AMAZON MYSPACE

R.E.M.’s last album, Around the Sun, stays

on my shelf only for

the sake of catalog

completeness; it’s been

freed once or twice since 2004 to be dusted off and quickly reassessed: Did a band this important

really release something so incomprehen-

sibly dull and unrelentingly bored with

itself? Well, they did. And Michael Stipe—

the one singing and wearing raccoon

eye shadow lately—even acknowledged

the misstep, admitting that the group had

lost focus, and that he, guitarist Peter

Buck, and bassist Mike Mills “didn’t talk…

for a couple of records.” The slow-moving,

keyboard-heavy, adult-contemporary-leaning Sun felt like a sputtering roadside

breakdown for a band that was running

on fumes. But the critical and commercial

shrugs that met the album seem to have

had one overwhelmingly positive effect:

They gave R.E.M. something to prove.

Nothing to do, then, but hit the gas and hope for the best, a method Accelerate— R.E.M.’s 14th studio album—establishes

right there in the title. Whether inspired

by their own stagnation, market forces,

or producer Jacknife Lee, the decision

to lift the rock restraining order worked wonders: Accelerate corrals 35 minutes

of the fastest songs Stipe and Co. have

written in decades, all performed with

a sense of joyous purpose that clearly

comes from a “Fuck it, let’s just do this”

attitude. They haven’t sounded this surprised with themselves since 1998’s Up,

haven’t made an album this consistent since 1992’s Automatic for the People,

and haven’t redlined so engagingly since 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, whose terrific

“These Days” lives on in spirit here.

And though populated almost exclu-

sively by snarling guitars and hell-bent drums, Accelerate doesn’t suffer any whiffs

T _sohe_ey_ngh_aa_gve_inn_g’t_lyre_sd_inli _cn_eed Lifes Rich Pageant.

of desperation like 1994’s half-decent, glam-rock youth grab, Monster. Instead, here’s a band rediscovering the shadings

and strengths of rock’n’roll elementalism.

Sure, album bookends “Living Well Is the

Best Revenge” and “I’m Gonna DJ” share

the same basic ingredients and roughly

the same tempo, but the former looks

lovingly at R.E.M.’s distant rockin’ past,

while the near-ecstatic latter (“Death is

pretty final / I’m collecting vinyl / I’m

gonna DJ at the end of the world!”) offers

conclusive proof they haven’t lost their

inspiration completely in recent years.

More than just velocity lifts Accelerate:

It slows for the requisite Important Ballad

(“Until the Day Is Done”), a political

brooder more akin to “Drive” than “Every-

body Hurts,” and the terrific, mid-tempo

“Hollow Man,” with the most satisfying R.E.M. chorus in eons. Still, Accelerate will be rightfully championed as the defi-

brillator that shocked a once-great band

back to its senses. R.E.M. lay no claim to

being the biggest rock group on earth—

leave that empty title to their contemporary U2—but if they need an award, here’s one that fits: Most Improved.

ILLUSTRATION BY RICCARDO VECCHIO

STAR RATINGS CLASSIC EXCELLENT GOOD FAIR POOR