Review - Accelerate

Artist: R.E.M.
Album: Accelerate
Record Label: Warner Bros. Records
Producer(s): Jacknife Lee and R.E.M.
Release Date: April 1, 2008
Genre: Alternative Rock
Strong Points: Crisp production; loud mix compared to previous recent releases; relevant, poignant, sometimes ambiguous lyrics
Weak Points: Short run time; album slows down a bit in the middle; not as amazing as early R.E.M. (from ‘80s through early ‘90s)
Technical Score: A
Artistic Score: B-
Final Score (not an average): B
Moral Warnings: One song seems to question faith (Hollow Man); another song questions the existence of heaven (I’m Gonna DJ); one F-bomb dropped (Horse to Water)

Suddenly faced with the prospect that the world had left them behind after 2004’s poorly received Around the Sun, the members of R.E.M. knew that something had to be done. Bassist Peter Buck even alluded to the band members’ acute awareness of their own plight, saying in interviews that the consensus was that, with another bad record, R.E.M. would be finished as a band.

So the veterans went to work, crafting ambitious and creative songs that, while not rivaling their early, phenomenal, landmark work, certainly aspired to live up to it, while being relevant to today’s world. What came out of that work was “Accelerate,” an album full of crunching, catchy rock songs that are introspective while looking out at the world.

Kicking off the disc is a cut called Living Well is the Best Revenge, a song that features a cyclical guitar and vocalist/lyricist Michael Stipe raging about being “set up like a lamb to slaughter,” later proclaiming that “the future is ours and you don’t even rate a footnote.” Certainly a political statement, and one that sets up for an exceedingly political work from the guys from Athens, Georgia, one that is more poignant than anything on Around the Sun could have hoped to have been.

Following that comes Man-Sized Wreath, a more melodious song than the previous one, but no less angry or political, with Stipe singing, “A motorcade of benign strength shows the people that you care.”

The lead single off of Accelerate is the next track, Supernatural Superserious, a song that evokes a sense of teenaged confusion and angst, from an adult perspective, at least. Hollow Man comes next, with an emotional, gutty, relatable lyric: “I’ve been lost inside my head/Echoes fall off me/I took the prize last night/For complicated mess/For saying things I didn’t mean and/Don’t believe.” As amazing as this song is, it doesn’t match the simple beauty of the next song, a ballad called Houston.

Houston is one of those songs, like The Beatles’ Happiness is a Warm Gun, that feels like it goes on forever while actually being pretty short. It’s a concentrated burst of paranoia (“If the storm doesn’t get me, the government will”), but it also brings to mind the beauty of cities, largely without saying anything more about the city than the name and a feeling. The real meaning of the song comes through with the last line: “Belief has not failed me and so I am put to the test.”

The title track comes next, and this is really where the album begins to hit a low. Accelerate is the halfway point, and is one of the final straight up rock songs on the album. After this, the songs tend to take a more relaxed route, and, while still good, aren’t as memorable as the first half of the disc. Until the Day is Done feels like a Civil War ballad out of time and completely in its element, while Mr. Richards seems to indict Michael Richard’s racist comments some time back.

The duo of songs that come next, Sing for the Submarine and Horse to Water, embrace more fully the slower sound that R.E.M. takes for the latter half of Accelerate. This is not a bad thing, since these songs happen to be some of the more beautiful songs on the album. Unfortunately, R.E.M. set a pace early on, and while none of the songs are bad, the sudden transition from the title track to a slower sound is a bit jarring. Horse to Water picks up the pace again without missing a beat, and the chorus is akin to a rowdy pub song: "I'm not that easy, I am not your horse to water," Stipe shouts, and with that, one of the catchiest songs on the album was crafted.

Even through the low points of Accelerate, the band still proves that they are more relevant and more in-tune with music than the vast majority of new bands that have come out in recent years. This might have something to do with the time that they started playing music, having kept a certain garage rock and jangle pop sound through their career, or it might have to do with musical evolution becoming stagnant. Either way, R.E.M. has proven that, like the last song on the album brags, they will DJ at the end of the world.

Album Highlights:
Living Well is the Best Revenge
Hollow Man
Houston
Horse to Water
I'm Gonna DJ

--Drew Regensburger (drew@revolve21.com)