It was very clear the band were not pleased with Around the Sun, not just in its commercial performance, but with the collection as a whole. Each band member saw the press route for Accelerate as opportunity to beat the ritualistic piñata with sticks, with the general consensus of the band being that if the next album was a bad one, then it would signal the end of their careers. Fair enough, R.E.M. would disband after one more album anyway, but right now they had something to prove. And the music of Accelerate was showing its desire to prove something in spades.
It retrospect R.E.M. should have hired a new drummer since at least two albums ago. Whilst they still didn’t officially hire a singular stand in for Bill Berry, the other Bill of Rieflin might as well be considered as the unofficial fifth member on the roster. He was the frequent touring drummer for R.E.M, but as it is widely believed that songs on Accelerate were cut and constructed on the tour as way to keep the band focused – also done by restricting studio time to three weeks – kept the bands worst tendencies of the 2000’s at bay. Gone were the unnecessary five minute songs and a rhythm section that seemed to have a castaway in the wave of electronics. The band had made full on rock music, and unlike Monster they wouldn’t have to put that in quotation marks.
In fairness the sonic direction had really begun two years ago with the release of “Bad Day”, the spiritual successor to “It’s the End as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) that had more energy and intent than the band had in quite some time. But the introduction of U2 recommended producer Jacknife Lee and the conscious decision to make shorter songs in a punk sense not seen since the I.R.S records. In fact it has comparisons with Life Rich Pageant, as both records were the band simply letting it rip after a trilogy of albums with a similar aesthetic. In fact the fourth album of each R.E.M pentalogy seems to embrace their harder edge, and of the bands “rockers” I might prefer this one to even Monster in terms of consistency (though that one had higher peaks when it comes to classic singles). It might be tempting to see this direction as aping the garage-revival scene, and indie rock typified by The Strokes, but the closest comparison Accelerate has in terms of style is of one their own contemporaries; the then disbanded Guided by Voices.
This album also came with the most political intent since Document. Both were albums recorded in the middle of Republican presidencies that the band found objectionable, but this one seems to also reflect the optimism sweeping at the tail end of the Bush administration as Barack Obama was seen as a beacon of hope (if not for everyone, then certainly for Michael Stipe). And this direction, focus, drive (any word apart the obvious) means that the band has their finest collection of songs since at least Up.
So with all this positivity, why am I not willing to count this as among the greatest R.E.M. records? Well there are a couple of reasons that I’ll get into when covering the songs, but the main one can be summed up in one word: mastering. Say what you want about Pat McCarthy and his seeming hatred of the low end, but he did allow the best songs of a middling period to embrace the listener in their ethereal intent. But here with Jackhammer Mcgee the band had accelerated right into the peak years of the Loudness Wars. Now here’s a comparison I never thought I was going to make: Metallica and R.E.M. were both owned by Warner Bros.; both came out with respective comeback albums in 2008 (Death Magnetic and Accelerate); both were made with the incentive to be hard direct records, and both as a result of a desire to be LOUD were left with a sound way more compressed than their great period works.
I can only speak for myself, but I want to listen to these kinds of records at the highest of volumes, and when I do this for Accelerate it actually becomes hard to listen to. It is only a thirty three minute record, but by song four – conveniently one the quieter songs – I feel the need to turn the dials down. Maybe one day there will be a re-mastering of Accelerate that sorts out all my main problems (which I’ll try my best not to repeat throughout this review), but until then I’ll have to appreciate these songs at a lower volume than desired.
And appreciate indeed with the first song, “Living Well is the Best Revenge.” After the dirge of Around the Sun, there couldn’t be a clearer way for the band to announce “we’re back to ROCK, everyone!”. It’s great to here the Mills bass wander around the track and be at his melodic best, and his present is also felt again in his counterpoint vocals. Then of course there is Buck “Living Well” and going to town on the guitar chords. All of the while Stipe matches that aggression by throwing some major shade at the contemporary political landscape, with lines “Don’t turn your talking points on me, history will set me free/The future’s ours and you don’t even read the footnote now!” repeated ad nauseum, but to great effect.
This force continues with “Man-Sized Wreath”, which seems to be following similar messages of the media as the band was speaking on in “Bad Day”. But it is still a ground with some fertile potential, and Stipe takes it with some rather pointed lines. I do admit at this point to miss the more cryptic time, but if every line was “Nature abhors a vacuum but what’s between your ears?” I wouldn’t complain. It’s amazing to think that at one point this was going to be a b-side, as the main chorus of this song, with Bucks guitar’s sweeping guitar, the organ (if you can hear it), Rieflin’s drums and the interplay between Stipe and Mills produces the best chorus that the band has had since New Adventures in Hi-Fi.
The final song of this guitar-driven trilogy “Supernatural Superseriousness”, wouldn’t be the fist that I would have chosen as the first single and reintroduction for the band – “Living Well” seemed to do that enough – but this is still a strong tune that combines a very Joe Strummer like guitar lick with some of Buck more jangly tendencies (which you can hear if you squint your ears). Meanwhile Stipe’s lyrics return to the classic “we can all pull through this mode” that he has really laid on thick since the 2000’s, with multiple mentions of the protagonist crying because of the “Humiliation/of your teenage station”. Maybe this quite clear inspiration message is why it was chosen for the single.
But as the record has got to its loudest point, it then decides to go for the piano ballad. Mill’s sparse chords are quiet beautiful, as well as Buck’s arpeggios, as they both accompany Stipe as he speaks of being lost in his head, with the ringing pianos mimicking the echoes falling on him. Say, this is pretty quiet, maybe I can turn it up aga-OH I actually wasn’t expecting that! Yes it is here that the band employs the largest dynamic changes, and its here that I think the compression really hurts the feel of the song, because otherwise this is incredibly effective. Lines like “believe in me, believe in nothing” are a classic example of R.E.M. contradiction, and although it contains some of the most simplistic sentiment Stipe has yet mined, it matches the directness of the music at that point (another contradiction). In terms of art on Hollow Men it is below TS Eliot, but above Paul Verhoeven.
We move from this to the clearest political song on the album yet in “Houston”. An anthem about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – “If the storm doesn’t kill me the government will” is a hell of an opening line – that at only two minutes manages to create a very evocative atmosphere, with what sounds like a church organ that is coughing up phlegm laced over acoustic guitar and…hey, is that the ol’ mandolin? Well it’s certainly nice to hear from it again. In fact the whole instrumentation gives a short but appropriate variation, that with Stipe’s descriptions of “Houston” manages to sound rough and beaten, yet filled with beauty.
The song is the title track, a phenomenon that is rare for this band, but unlike Around the Sun is not a worrying sign of the band’s loss of creativity. Unfortunately this is not the best song on the record; although this is a song in which the protagonist literally says “I’m incomplete”, so colder and dourer is what they are going for, that doesn’t mean the song has to feel at a distance (and Mills has gone missing again!). But Buck is still playing with various sounds and velocity in an effective way, and it is here I can appreciate Rieflin’s energetic cymbal work.
Although there is no two halves of the record, the countdown of the more acoustic led “Until the Day Is Done” certainly seems to imply we are entering a second half, perhaps were we complete the central character again. And indeed this song is designed to be very much an uplifting tune, with a mid-tempo acoustic ballad that I think is meant to harken back to Automatic for the People. But when I made the comparisons to Lifes Rich Pageant again, and realised that this is essentially that album’s “Swan Swan H”, that the song really feels ordinary in comparison. It still does sound like a like a call to battle with the intentions of the opening lines, the rhythm of the acoustic guitar and the militaristic drumming. Just maybe not the most exciting battle in the world.
Still, the record really picks up again with “Mr. Richards”, which sounds like the rhythms of Lifes Rich Pageant filled the aesthetics found the best parts of Monster. This is particularly true in Buck’s guitars, where the acoustic and bright guitar lines are more a part of their folkier days, and the electric guitar is like the shoegaze that he was playing with in the mid nineties. Also of note here is Mills bass work, here moving from rubling singular notes to fast moving arpeggio. It’s a shame that there is synth buried in there somewhere trying to get out. It’s about as hidden as who exactly this “Mr. Richards” is. I presume he is made up, but either way he is the perfect stand in for high ranking figures with a public façade, who are gradually, but satisfyingly, having that mask taken away from them.
Stipe gets his Charlie Kaufman on for “Sing for the Submarine”, creating the metaphor of the submarine to explain the process of how he writes his songs. Added to this he peppers clear references to old songs, including “Feeling Gravity’s Pull”, “It’s the It’s The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and that song he really liked from the last album, “Electron Blue”. It is a little beleaguered, more so by the fact this is the song on the album they decided to go longer for. But there is still great sounding guitar components to the song, the bass and guitar working as though they are actually being dragged down to the bottom of the sea, like “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” felt pulled by gravity in Fables of the Reconstruction.
This is contrasted with the fast and galloping penultimate styling of “Horse to Water”. This is the closest the album gets to sounding like a punk rock song with the crying riffs of the guitar, and the rhythm section really gives it their all in the chorus with Rieflin’s thunderous spasms and Mills playing like he had entered the studio hardwired on concentrated caffeine. Stipe himself delivers his lines like he is hooked to the same drip, with staccato, stabbing vocals combined with long groans as though he is the horse being drowned. His voice is unfortunately noticeably distorted when this song loud, but the force of the song manages to overpower the force of the speakers.
Accelerate’s final song, “I’m Gonna DJ”, shares a final parallel with Lifes Rich Pagent final song “Superman”, in that the lyrics are noticeably dumber but the music makes up for it. The lyrics do convey the right amount of joy yet paranoia that the song wants to convey, but lines like “Hey steady steady, hey steady steady/I don’t wanna go until I’m good and ready” are as silly as the critics of “Stand” and “Shiny Happy People”. But the intensity also makes itself clear with the escalating guitar lines of the intro and the song’s sudden abrupt stopped. If we have spent this whole album on the Accelerate pedal, this is everyone hitting the brick wall and spurting up in flames.
Testing the Accelerate on a car usually requires keeping in a straight line, and between the music, the runtime and the lyrics this album is designed to be as straight and as direct as the band ever was. Despite a weaker second half and a mix that really doesn’t flatter what the dynamics are capable of, Accelerate still manages to stand as a good album without having to make comparisons to the last one, a thirty three minute shot of adrenaline. If one of the band ever decided to do another mix of this album for some anniversary collection or something, don’t be surprised if I would put this album even higher in my rankings. With this album, R.E.M. still sounded like they had some energy in them. Three years later, they wouldn’t feel the same way…
What did you think, though?
R.E.M Album Rankings
- Automatic for the People
- Lifes Rich Pageant
- Murmur
- Reckoning
- New Adventures in Hi-Fi
- Document
- Fables of the Reconstruction
- Up
- Chronic Town (EP)
- Out of Time
- Green
- Accelerate
- Monster
- Reveal
- Dead Letter Office
- Around the Sun