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I love every new R.E.M. album when it first comes out, even Around the Sun, so it shouldn't be any surprise that I'm loving Accelerate only a day after it was released. This one is seriously good, though, and I don't see it souring over time. From the opening urgency of "Living Well is the Best Revenge" through to the not-as-goofy-as-it-could-be "I'm Gonna DJ" this album doesn't have a clunker of a song on it. With almost half the songs under three minutes, the album doesn't have a chance to wear on you. I've already noticed multiple times that I've put the CD on while I'm doing other things around the house and I can't believe how soon I'm listening to track 8. Of course, once I hit the end, it usually goes right back to the beginning.
A lot has been made of this album being R.E.M.'s return to Document or Lifes Rich Pageant-style rocking, but I see it going back even farther than that. The really raw rockers - "Living Well..," "Accelerate," "Horse to Water," and "I'm Gonna DJ" sound like an R.E.M. that's really never been put on record before. Rather, it sounds like the band in 1980 and 1981 when they were learning how to be a band and were oozing raw energy on stage. I've never thought that the early albums captured everything that I've heard in all of the live recordings I have from that time. Much of that is probably because the band quickly evolved into something much more than a loud, fast guitar band, but the excitement of those early performances is something that I have always wished would've been captured in the studio. Much of my pining is probably rooted in nostalgia for the band I didn't grow up with, and I certainly don't want to give the impression that I think the early records are lacking.
In a way, this album is the culmination of a slow progression over the past five years of the band re-discovering some of those "learning to be a band" songs. In that time, they've gone back into their stash of 10-15 early R.E.M. songs that never were put on tape and gave them some new life. This started with "All the Right Friends," which was put on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, "Permanent Vacation" was unearthed for regular live performances, and even though its Genesis was 1985/86, "Bad Day" completed this digging through the unrecorded back catalog. All three of those songs sound like they could be brand-new recordings that belong on Accelerate.
My good writer friend Jess will be very happy to hear that one thing I've really been stricken with on this new album is Michael Stipe's lyrics. I don't always take as much of an interest in the words as I do the sounds, but it's been hard to ignore these. It's obvious from many of the songs here that he wants his frustration with the state of the world now to be known. It's still Stipe, though, so you still have to dig through the words a bit to get to the meaning. There are songs about the media's lack of responsibility, the government's poor response to the Katrina disaster (with the line "If the storm doesn't kill me the government will" printed large on the lyric sheet), and something about Mr. Richards, who's apparently been sent to jail and I can't quite tell if we should sympathize with him or despise him. What I've really noticed about these lyrics, though, is how even they seem to be reaching back to earlier R.E.M. The most obvious is "Sing for the Submarine," where Stipe directly references three old song titles - "Electron Blue," "Feeling Gravity's Pull," and "High Speed Train." In this Pitchfork interview, he explains how these songs are all related as they're about his own dream world. He's a strange guy, yes, but it's refreshing to hear him being so open about his songs, both older and current. A less obvious reference that I've tied, at least in my mind, to an older R.E.M. song is the line "bridge the schism" in "Mr. Richards" which was also used in "Hope" off of Up. I might be reading too much into this, but it's not a too-common phrase, and the song's feeling sort of echoes the repetitive pulse of the older one, as well. I've also taken note of the use of "pageantry" in "Man-Sized Wreath," which I'm tying to the title of their fourth album. Maybe a strech, but I like the idea that Stipe is reaching into the past to make these great new lyrics.
Well, this has taken me as long to write as it's taken to listen to the album one more time. Music will provide the light I cannot resist, indeed. Time to hit play again.
Jerad posted this in Music | Comments (0)
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