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| Artist: Rem
Label: Wea
Category: Music
List Price: £15.99
Buy New: £4.98
You Save: £11.01 (69%)
New (61) Used (16) from £2.90
Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 639
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 4.9 x 0.3
MPN: 418620
UPC: 093624988588
EAN: 0093624988588
ASIN: B0013BNY2Q
Release Date: March 31, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 66-67 of 67 | | « PREV 1 ... | | |
 Definite return to immediate rock songs March 18, 2008
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
Having followed R.E.M. since Document, I can confirm that it is definitely a return to the faster, raw sound that made their 3,4 & 5 albums so enjoyable. The guitar melodies are Buck returning to his Fables style, the backing vocals are more like Green era and the whole album feels like a mature companion to Life's Rich Pageant (my favourite by them). They do experiment with different styles - Mr Richards especially but there is nothing too dramatic in variance.
You are not going to hear anything ground braking, experimental or in any way different to their sound. However you will hear one of the most consistent bands of the last 25 years leaving behind their recent overproduced past and delivering a fast paced and fun album. It makes you want to do stupid shoulder Stipe dance impressions. Importantly, it should fill the enormo-domes they are playing this summer.
FINALLY, an R.E.M. record I don't have to be ashamed of. March 16, 2008
57 out of 70 found this review helpful
R.E.M. are back and this time, it's brilliant.
First impressions? Blown away. I literally danced around my bedroom at 2AM listening to it.
The opening trio of Living Well Is The Best Revenge, Man-Sized Wreath and sugarsweet single Supernatural Superserious makes for perhaps the best start to an R.E.M. record ever. I'm serious.
And the pace hardly lets up. Hollow Man starts off like a Coldplay cut, all mournful piano, before lifting into the sort of college rock, post-punk dance off the band used to make.
Houston, one of the shortest tracks the band have ever done, manages to sound experimental, sinister and hopeful all at the same time. Stipe's vocals are gruff and more buried in the mix than they have been in a decade, and his lyric writing returns to the abstract throughout.
Title track Accelerate is heavy and dark. It reminds me of Joy Division or Editors, but is unmistakeably R.E.M. The return of Mike Mills to backing vocals provides the album with some of its most impressive moments, particularly here. Until the Day Is Done is a callback to some of the material on Around the Sun, indignant and angry about the state of the world. The record seems to deal with hope and fear about the future. You get the impression that the band looks back at the past 25 years and thinks "What the hell's changed?". It's angry and bitter, but filled with little rays of sunshine and moments of beauty.
Mr. Richards provides a perfect example of this. Rallying against an evil-doer and listing his faults, the song suddenly picks up with a refrain of "We're the children of the choir, hey / And we know what's going on". This is matched with a beautiful bit of guitar work that turns it from a grungy dirge into something transcendental. Sing For The Submarine is almost, though thankfully not quite, a prog-rock track. It bounces all over the place and is the most forceful track this band have produced. Stipe self-references a couple of previous songs, which I thought would bug me, but actually serves to enhance that feeling of having a conversation with the past. This song really soars; I was expecting a meandering take, but Bill Rieflin, who, for all intents and purposes is now R.E.M.'s drummer has done wonders for this group.
Horse to Water sees Stipe tripping over his words again, which he hasn't done since It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). This track is the only one that hasn't really grabbed me yet; it seems likes it's going nowhere in a hurry, although the chaotic ending promises to be a brilliant live moment. Rounding off the briskest set in the catalogue is I'm Gonna DJ. This is probably the goofiest, most laid-back track since The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite and has a bunged-up sounding Stipe promising to 'DJ at the end of the worrrrrld!'. A lot of people hate this track, but I think it's a fantastic and different way for them to end an album; it's fast, it's fun and it's basically saying "We're all doomed... anyone for a party?".
It's hard to talk about this album without referring to the past few R.E.M. records. I will defend Up and Reveal to the death, as necessary, if flawed records, which provided me with some of my all-time favourite songs by the band. They were quirky and different, if overlong and questionably sequenced. Around the Sun, the band's last record is harder to defend. Quite a few of the tracks had strong potential, but I once heard it described as an 'ivory tower' record; the band sat up in an expensive studio tweaking knobs and forgetting what they were really about.
Accelerate, then, is them jumping out of the window head-first and landing on two feet. It doesn't simply ape the past, or get stuck on repeat. It reminds everyone why R.E.M. ever mattered, but sounds urgent, sounds relevant and sounds like it belongs here and now. It reconnects with the past, of the hopes and fears you feel when you're younger and says "Let's do something about it!".
Incredible. Please, even if you've hated R.E.M. for the past ten years, give it a listen.
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