grow apart,” he says. “But it means you have to adapt to that—the old way of working

together might not work anymore. What’s

more important, getting my way and making

sure my feelings aren’t hurt, or making music with one of the best bands of all time? And

you realize, okay, I don’t have to be right all

the time, and I do want to work with these

guys for the future, and I do love the music we make, and it is more important than the

fact that I don’t get to do it all my way.”

It didn’t take long for these newfound

epiphanies to be tested on the job. Buck called up Mills last winter and invited him to

Seattle, where they cut some instrumental

demos—faster and more aggressive than anything they’d attempted in years—with

longtime second guitarist/keyboardist

Scott McCaughey and drummer Bill Rieflin.

Although Stipe prefers the gently panoramic music that has dominated R.E.M. albums

since New Adventures, “they didn’t give me

much of the slower stuff,” the singer says.

“So I stepped up. I ignored my instincts and went toward the faster stuff.”

At the Edge’s urging, R.E.M. hired

producer Garret “Jacknife” Lee, whom they

through The Last Record. “When we put those records out, I talked to the press and said, ‘I’m thrilled by what we have. I’m excited about what we’ve done. We’re finally

admired for his work with Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, and U2. In order not to lose focus, they scheduled three different three-week sessions in three different cities

together,’ ” Stipe says. “And I’ve said that so many times that I’m sick of hearing myself

this past summer.

say it. I might have been putting up a brave front, knowing that all was not well at

Southern gentlemen to the core, they each insist that the failure of Around

home. But I believed at the moment that it was the best record we could make.”

Stipe is quick to credit the state of the union for Accelerate’s urgent tone (“When the empire is going down the toilet, it’s easy to write great, angry songs”), but the

the Sun, and their decision to work with Lee, had nothing to do with engineer/ producer Pat McCarthy, who’d been with them since 1994’s Monster. “[Pat] did a great job with what we gave him, which was three clashing, shut-off universes,”

state of R.E.M.’s union proved equally inspirational. “Given the conversations that

says Stipe. “We had been stuck in this downward spiral for a while, and he was

we had, pulling ourselves back to the same table, talking to each other honestly, as friends, as bandmates, as a creative unit, and resolving those issues,” Stipe says,

there, just throwing us lifelines and pulling us out one at a time—and drying us off and then going back in for another one. I think he was really ready to move

“the most obvious thing was to do something fast and raw and immediate.”

on and work with somebody else who was a little less…difficult.”

We’re talking about his honorary chairmanship of the New York City Food

No fiddling around while recording this time—they had a firm deadline. Mills

Bank, which supplies food to the needy, when the waiter brings over a dish of olive oil gelato, which Stipe calls his “favorite dessert in the world.” I taste my

suggested they work out the new material in a live setting, just like they did 25 years and 50 million albums ago. “There’s a feeling you get from playing songs

first spoonful, and it’s so intense I cry out, “Wow!” almost involuntarily.

live that really helps you tighten them up,” he says. Lee suggested working in

“Right?” he exclaims, and we both chortle. Then we get back to talking about feeding the hungry. Stipe is running late; there’s no time to dwell on the irony.

his native Dublin—R.E.M. are huge in Ireland, and the 1,500-capacity Olympia

Theatre was perfect. They’d developed the past few albums cloistered in the studio; now the public would watch the band put their makeup on. So much for

the fabled R.E.M. mystique.

Perpetual bachelor Mike Mills is the band’s resident bon vivant. But he’s feeling neither bon nor vivant this evening, as he’s just getting over the flu. Still, he wants to meet at New York steak house the Old Homestead. After a bit of token soul-searching, he orders the $195 Kobe beef. He manages one or two bites before requesting a doggie bag. In his free time, Mills likes to live what he calls “a station-to-station life” at his Athens home. On a typical day, this rock star will get up, play on the computer for a while, head over to the piano, back to the computer,

“I see it as throwing the whole fuckin’ thing out the window,” says Stipe. “We’re denying the fans the mystery of how something came to fruition. I was fine with

the idea. But the reality of it was terrifying.”

“If we’d walked out there and said, ‘Hey, here’s our new record,’ and it sucked,

that would’ve just been the end,” Buck says of the five-night stand in June and July 2007. “Because even though they were an audience that we know likes us,

still, they have blogs, and if there were only two good songs and nine crap songs,

the world would know and it would have been over.”

Stipe is confident that the gamble worked, and the ensuing buzz, borne out by videos on the band’s own remdublin.com and You Tube (at one point, seven of the

and then to the guitar. Then maybe he’ll go outside and goof around with the

100 most viewed clips on the site were from the Dublin shows), was unequivocal:

dog. And then perhaps some more guitar. “That’s what I do,” he says, smiling

The new R.E.M. album was going to be a barn burner. And the strict recording

contentedly. “Not a bad way to be.”

But while Mills is playing with his dog in Athens, Stipe, who also maintains a

schedule meant Stipe couldn’t overly tinker with lyrics and vocal parts.

The approach hearkened back to the old days, when he famously mumbled

home there, is often in New York, and Buck is spending time with his twin daugh-

oblique, improvised lyrics—the eerie Hurricane Katrina ballad “Houston” is one

ters in Seattle. The geographical separation doesn’t exactly foster togetherness.

such beneficiary of off-the-cuff inspiration. “I work really well under pressure,

Buck was the first to leave Athens, when he got remarried in the mid-’90s.

“I’ll be honest—I was pissed off at Peter when he moved away,” Mills says. “Not

and the guys know that all too well,” Stipe says. “So the pace forced me to kind of spit stuff out. That doesn’t happen if you’re thinking too hard, if you’re trying

right away, but later, when I realized that now I don’t get to hang out with him as

to manufacture something, if you’re being clever, if you know your craft too well,

a friend and I only get to see him as a business colleague.” He’s since made peace

or you even consider it a craft. And I’m guilty of all those things.”