It seems there’s been a recent spate of veteran artists returning to form with a brilliant, late-career album—from Ian Hunter to Graham Parker, Ray Davies to Paul Weller, a number of artists have recently put forth work that’s worthy of anything within their considerable recorded oeuvre. With Accelerate, you can add REM to that list, as well. Sharply focused and stripped down, the new disc is as far removed from its immediate predecessors Reveal and Around the Sun as Automatic for the People was from Green and Out of Time. From the opening track, “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” featuring Michael Stipe’s raw-throated vocals and Peter Buck’s relentlessly driving guitar, it’s clear that REM means business. The band had imbued Accelerate with a distinctly live sound: it’s less about what can be accomplished in the recording studio, and more about immediacy and connecting with the listener. Thematically, Accelerate is relatively dark, dealing with the failures of the government, the dangers of mass media, and the unfilled promises of the days to come-overall, the album’s cynical view of the future recalls Warren Zevon’s unjustly overlooked Transverse City. Which is not to say that the band doesn’t believe in having fun: despite the Bush administration’s woefully inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina (“If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will”) and the war in Iraq dragging the nation toward a long, inevitable decline (“The battle’s been lost, the war is not won/An addled republic, a bitter refund”), there’s no reason not to shake your ass in light of the coming apocalypse (“Death is pretty final/I’m collecting vinyl/I’m gonna DJ at the end of the world.”) At least we’ve got that going for us.
--Rick Schadelbauer [May 26, 2008]
