R.E.M. were once my favorite rock band. I've liked most of the left turns they've taken over the years, including Monster and its successor, so I didn't want to join the anti- crowd that coalesced around their recent output. Problem was, the output left me little choice. As the titles grew more and more expansive – stepping things up, getting ready for the big reveal, a full revolution around the sun – the contents were showing clear signs of slack. Being in a vital, creative band means clocking many hours not just practicing, but obsessing – and I understand that being a rock star must give you a different perspective on the value of your time, but for God’s sake, if you’re going to play it that way then give your records titles like Saggy Shit and Do The Collapse. It’s frustrating; the same band that had put out more solid, four-dot records than anybody else in my lifetime could apparently no longer write a song together. Inevitably, people began to wonder where the “old R.E.M.” had gone.
One of the critical tried-and-truisms about the old R.E.M. is that the deeply oblique slant of much of their work precluded easy analysis of their intentions. By comparison, the agenda dominating Accelerate is easy to read: nearly every song reveals an effort to evoke some quirk of that early, independent period. "Mansized Wreath," for example, has a shuffling, stop-and-go rhythm that could have fit onto Life's Rich Pageant. Sometimes the references are even more obvious. "Until the Day Is Done" is a bit of lazy acousticism with the sort of tom-tom tattoos that were typical of the slower stuff on Reckoning, and "Sing For the Submarine" imitates the dark murk found on Fables of the Reconstruction, down to the exact flavor of backing vocals Mills was fond of at the time. And then there's "I'm Gonna DJ," a goofy joke track that wants the apocalyptic high of "It's The End of the World As We Know It," takes the wrong lyrical turns, and winds up closer to their cover of "Superman."
One of R.E.M.'s great strengths was this idiosyncratic, self-referential view. Their political record was a "document," their odds-and-ends disc was a "dead letter office," and Fables of the Reconstruction was styled as a piece of metatext about Southern myths. That insularity was one of the immediate casualties of their status as hitmakers, and its absence contributed to the growing sense, particularly after Monster, that the band had lost touch with its muse. With all that considered, you'd think that Accelerate would be the glorious reappearance that the titles of the records keep promising. It isn't.
The problem seems to lie with the half-cooked character of much of this material. On the up side, R.E.M. do sound like a band again, but they don’t sound like a band very much apart from their peers. In fact, the strongest impression here is that 10 years have sanded most of the nuance from their playing. The overall effect is the opposite of accomplished later work from bands like Fugazi (whose Argument seemed effortless because practice and cohesion had pushed them within easy reach of impressive musical synergies) and Los Lobos (another band who have simply clocked enough hours in a room together to benefit creatively). Accelerate feels like the work of a garage band inspired to write for an upcoming gig – which means it's a lot warmer and truer to R.E.M.'s spirit than Reveal, but not so much that the hype is entirely justified.
At least we get a few good cuts this time. "Living Well Is the Best Revenge," "Mansized Wreath," and "Horse to Water" are all pleasing to ears that enjoyed New Adventures in Hi-Fi. "Houston" isn't a bad dirge. A lot of the other songs seem curiously empty, as though they were placeholders for something more substantial to be written later.
It's heartening to think that R.E.M. might have arrested their slide into middle-aged MOR. It's heartening to see that they're still capable of writing a song better than "All the Way To Reno." Still, my impression is that they should've taken more time writing this material and been a bit more critical as to what made the cut.