R.E.M. COLLAPSE INTO NOW

Music review: R.E.M. Return To Form With “Collapse Into Now”

By The Burg Staff on Mar. 23, 2011
By Matt Ashare
The first time I gave up on R.E.M. was back in ’88, when they released “Green,” an all-too-conventional “pop” album that seemed to undermine everything the band stood for.
I mean, here were the guys who essentially created the template for indie rock — punk inverted into a kind of thoughtful, sensitive, yet still subversive folk-inflected rock, an enticing whisper rather than a threatening scream — blatantly mugging for the masses on the MTV-ready single “Stand.” Argh!
    But I got over it: although it may best be remembered for the upbeat “Shiny Happy People,” 1991’s “Out Of Time,” which won one of the first Grammys for “Best Alternative Music Album,” was redolent with moody mystery, insinuating melodies, and lyrics that were cryptically poetic enough to get me back on board. Besides, by then the notion of “selling out” had lost any real meaning and the idea of Pete Buck as guitar hero and Michael Stipe as international pop star was at least amusing, if not inspiring.
     My second fallout with R.E.M. was more severe. I’ve never begrudged a band of R.E.M.‘s stature for experimental detours — U2 worked through their misguided mid-’90s electronica flirtations and wound up with “Beautiful Day.” But when Bill Berry, the band’s original drummer retired in 1997, Stipe, Buck, and bassist Mike Mills just seemed lost. The subsequent album, “Up,” was an amorphous, impenetrable downer that set the band adrift. I wasn’t even particularly aroused by the rousing, politicized, hard guitar-driven “Accelerate,” the perhaps too finely focused 2008 disc that, to these ears, oversold the concept that R.E.M. were back on solid green ground.
     Now, maybe it’s a misreading (that’s half the fun of parsing Stipe’s best lyrics), but “I was wrong/I have been laughable wrong” sure sounds like an apology to me. That’s a line from “Discoverer,” the pounding opening track of R.E.M.‘s new “Collapse Into Now.”
Buck’s guitar rings mightily, Mills thumps along melodically, and Stipe’s practically testifying as big chords coalesce around a bigger backbeat. “That just the slightest bit of finesse/Might have made a little less mess/But it was what it was/Let’s all get on with it, now,” he sings with warmth, humor, and defiance.

     Buck keeps things churning as “All the Best” announces itself with Stipe shouting “So over me/So pie in my face” before making this declaration of intention: “I’ll sing in rhyme/I’ll give it one more time/I’ll show the kids how to do it/Fine, fine, fine.” Go Michael! (I’m reminded that Buck actually did show the kids how to do it earlier this year when he guested on the Decemberists’ “The King Is Dead.”)
     The guys go for gorgeous on the largely acoustic “Überlin,” the mandolin-laced “Oh My Heart,” and the yearning “It Happened Today” (featuring an Eddie Vedder cameo). And they nail it. Not sure how Canadian electro-punk provocateur Peaches found her way into the party, but she and Stipe have some infectious fun poetry slamming on “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter.” And the original punk-poet priestess, Patti Smith, turns up singing a counterpoint to Stipe’s “Song of Myself” spoken wordings (“I am Walt Whitman proud. . . This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive, living blessed, I understand”) on the album’s closer, the feedback haunted “Blue.”
     Let’s just say that, 30 years after the nascent murmurings of R.E.M.’s arresting 1981 single “Radio Free Europe,” I’m happy to be back on board. Again.   
Ashare, a freelance writer based in Lynchburg, is a former music editor for The Boston Phoenix. http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/music_review_r.e.m._return_to_form_with_collapse_into_now