Xmas list

Happy holidaze: a Christmas playlist

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: December 21, 2011 

'Tis the season to be, well, lots of things. Overwhelmed by family obligations, annoyed by numbing doses of holiday muzak streaming from the speakers at just about every big-box chain (I'm not naming names here), and let's just say "bemused" by the presence of so many jolly, white-bearded Santas in so, so many car commercials (a particular pet peeve of mine). Don't worry, I'm not going to go off on a dated rant about the commodification of Christmas or get all scrooged up about the long lines at Target or the alarming abundance of subpar, made-for-tv holiday movies that have been cutting into my obsessive viewing of "Criminal Minds" reruns (Patinkin or Montegna?: sometimes I just can't decide. . .). Instead, I've been hunkered down in my music bunker (it's a virtual space: I haven't gotten around to building the actual one just yet), putting together a nostalgic little playlist for my holidaze.

       No, I haven't uploaded it to Spotify just yet. Maybe next year. Until then, here are my ten picks for an admittedly old-school, punk rock-leaning Chrismukkah that I might actually foist on my friends if I'm feeling particularly fiendish this weekend. . .

1) The Sex Pistols, "Holidays In the Sun" (1977).

       I realize that Johnny Rotten wasn't thinking mistletoe or candy canes or silent nights when he laid down the sneering vocals for the Pistols fourth incendiary single and what would be the opening track on the band's only proper studio album, Never Mind the Bullocks. No, he was contemplating a "cheap holiday in other people's misery," channeling nuclear anxieties ("I didn't ask for sunshine and I got World War III"), and, if I'm not mistaken, commenting on the boom/bust cycles of economic bubbles ("I wanna see some history/'cuz now I've got a reasonable economy"). Any of that sound familiar?

      

2) Dead Kennedys, "Holiday In Cambodia" (1980).

       Not sure if this was intended as an answer to the Sex Pistols, but how could it not have been? Against an eerie surf-punk guitar riff, DKs singer Jello Biafra works himself into a characteristically caustic frenzy over the unintended consequences of a protracted overseas war that caused a lot of consternation here on the homefront and didn't necessarily accomplish what it was meant to. Again, sound familiar?

3) The Ramones, "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)" (1989).

       Okay, so the Ramones were well past their prime by the time they recorded this little holiday nugget for Brain Drain (a/k/a the "Pet Cemetery" album). But they were still more than capable of cranking up the distortion and putting their own stamp on the holidays with the late Joey doing his best to croon couplets like, "All the children are tucked in their beds/Sugar-plum fairies dancing in the heads/Snowball fighting, it's so exciting baby/Yeah, yeah, yeah. . ." Plus, the title really is so perfectly Ramones.

4) The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York" (1987).

       Original Pogues frontman Shane McGowan still had most of his teeth when he sparred with Brit-pop singer Kirsty MacColl in this epic holiday duet by this Irish rock group who artfully split the difference between punk attitude and traditional Celtic folk. "You were handsome/You were pretty/Queen of New York City/When the band finished playing/They yelled out for more," goes the back and forth between the two young lovers, before bittersweet memories lead the two to conclude, "Happy christmas your arse/I pray god it's our last." But there's a kind of redemption in the end as McGowan proudly declares, "And the boys of the NYPD choir still singing Galway Bay/And the bells are ringing out for Christmas day."

5) The Kinks, "Father Christmas" (1977).

       Ray and Dave Davies must have been plugged into the same juice the class of ’77 punks were powered by when they delivered this angry yet melodic salvo written from the point of view of a couple of beggar boys. "Father Christmas/Give us some money/Don't mess around with those silly toys/We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over/We don't want your bread so don't make us annoyed," goes the chorus. And in the last verse, the singer comes right out and asks Father Christmas (that's what they call Santa over in England, or so I've been told) to give his "daddy a job." Kinda rings true this holiday season.

6) Keith Richards, "Run Rudolph Run" (1978).

       Long before he convened the X-pensive Winos, Keith took a break from the Stones to deliver his first solo recording as a Christmas present of sorts. It's just a straight-up version of the oft-covered Johnny Marks/Marvin Brodie novelty hit first popularized by Chuck Berry in ’58. Keith doesn't do anything fancy with the tune: he just sticks to the Berry blueprint and has an infectiously good time with it.

7) The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "This Time of Year" (2007).

      The Bosstones may best be remembered for helping to ignite the ska-punk revival that, for better or worse, flashed and burned in the early-’90s. But they had a lesser-known talent for penning straightforwardly catchy, revved-up, melodic punk tunes like this seasonal salutation to being home for the holidays, hanging with old friends, and making the best out of the Christmas season. "There's crap, it's true," admits raspy voiced Dicky Barrett, "What can you do?/It's simply spending it with you/That keeps me looking forward to/Forward to this time of year." Exactly.

8) Frickin' A, "Merry Merry Merry Frickin' Christmas" (2004).

       They may be from Cincinnati, Ohio, but when the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in like a hundred years back in 2004 after coming back from three games down to beat the Yankees in the ALCS, Frickin' A rose to the challenge and revised this already amusing Christmas send-up into a holiday gift to Red Sox Nation. So, after the Sox historic collapse in the final month of the 2011 season, I'll be consoling myself with lines like, "School's out/Christmas break/Back to Boston/The Red Sox in four straight." Next year. . .

9) The Raveonettes, "The Christmas Song" (2003).

       Almost embarrassed to admit that I found this little treasure on Music from The O.C.: Mix 3 — Have a Very Merry Chrismukkah. And I do wish that the Danish duo had opted for a less generic title for this moody little number — something like "I Wish that I Could Stay," as in "All the lights are coming on now/How I wish that it would snow now/I don't feel like going home now/I wish that I could stay." But it's a nice, bittersweet, slow-dance treat for the end of the night. . . or, of course, the early morning hours.

10) Lady Gaga, "Christmas Tree" (2009).

       Yes, I know the good Lady Gaga made headlines a few weeks back when she released her version of the Irving Berlin classic "White Christmas," replete with an extra verse she wrote herself because the original felt "too short." And maybe the new A Very Gaga Christmas would be a good way to close things out. But even with the extra rhymes, she plays "White Christmas" too straight. I much prefer the old, bad-grrrl Gaga, fa-la-la-la-la-laing about her own, ah, Christmas tree to the tune of a thumping techno-funk beat.

http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/dec/21/happy-holidaze-christmas-playlist-ar-1560323/ 

SPOTIFY

Spotify streams into America's digital clouds

By MATT ASHARE |
Published: December 13, 2011 

FUTURE TENSE: Is Spotify more than just another cloud?

Last week Rolling Stone published – and posted — its picks for the top 50 albums of 2011. Nothing new about that: the 44 year-old music magazine has been putting together an annual best-of list since as far back as I can remember. But this year, the on-line version includes a new feature — one that may portend a major change in the digital landscape. Underneath each of the 50 entries there's a little green tab that reads, "Listen on Spotify." A quick click on that link takes the user to the latest great hype in the realm of music, the Swedish-born, UK-based on-line service that conquered Europe, has partnered with Facebook, and is now making inroads here in the US. With deals in place with all four American major labels (EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros.), Spotify offers instant access to an enormous catalog of albums, along with a number of other features that are making it an appealing alternative/adjunct to Apple's dominant iTunes, as well as so-called "cloud-based" services like Pandora, Rhapsody, MOG, and Rdio.

       As is usually the case, the Rolling Stone top 50 includes a number of albums that I've had on heavy rotation since their release: the Decemberists' The King Is Dead; Radiohead's The King of Limbs; and Wilco's The Whole Love. But the top three finishers — Adele's 21, the Jay-Z/Kanye West collab Watch the Throne, and Paul Simon's So Beautiful or So What — are discs that I never really got around to checking out. No surprise there, given my particular tastes, the sheer amount of music that comes out every year, and the woefully finite number of hours any one person can devote to listening to, much less sorting through, incoming downloads and stacks of CDs. In past years, I might have scrambled to find copies of those discs, looked for an on-line stream of a track or two, or dialed up some YouTube videos. Not this time: a simple click on the Spotify logo and all three albums were, well, right there at my fingertips. No muss, no fuss, and, more importantly, no fees.

       As Crispen Stanbach, a 20 year-old Randolph College junior who serves as chief engineer for the school's internet radio station (WWRM) and hosts a weekly Wednesday night music and talk show called "Cogito Ergo Voro" (Latin for "I think therefore I devour"), explains, "I like music reviews. They're my favorite thing to read on the internet. And now, with Spotify, I can read a review, type that album into Spotify, and be listening to it in seconds. I don't have to pirate that album. I don't have to look around online to see if it's streaming somewhere. It's just all in one place. It's just this amazing thing, where as soon as your hear about an album, you can be listening to it, deciding whether or not you want to buy it, deciding whether or not you want to find out more about that artist. . . it's just so easy."

       You do need a Facebook account to sign up for Spotify. But, as long as you don't mind that, the service offers some rather appealing assets. For example, if, like Stanbach, you enjoy sharing your musical finds with friends, Spotify allows users to send an album, or any personalized playlist one might concoct, to Facebook contacts. It's a bit like iTunes' "ping" function, only it's automatically hard-wired into your Facebook account. "Being able to just click on a song and then click on my Facebook friend list and hit share so that it will show up in their Spotify inbox is a nice feature," says Stanbach. "I can send an entire album directly to a friend's inbox and he can listen to it without having to go to another place to discover it. I don't have to send him a message that says 'link to this album.' It's just there on his computer in two seconds."

       So, what's the catch? And, how could it possibly be legal, not to mention profitable, for an internet site to offer streams of streams of entire albums at no cost? The answer lies in the clouds — that is, the not-so-new business model exemplified by websites that allow subscribers to stream music and even create and save personalized playlists that they don't technically own because the tracks aren't downloaded. These services – SoundCloud, Pandora, and Rhapsody are three of the more popular and successful ones – generate income either with ads that pop up from time to time, or through monthly fees that generate the revenue necessary both to sustain the site and to pay the artist and label royalties. In that sense, they're something of a hybrid between traditional radio stations and satellite newcomers like Sirius XM, only they offer every user the option of customizing a virtual playlist. And all the major internet players, from iTunes to Amazon to Google, are getting into the cloud game. Even MySpace, which looked to be headed for the dustbin of digital history, may be poised for a comeback, with Justin Timberlake on board as a major investor determined to move the outdated social networking site in the direction of the clouds.

       Going up against iTunes here in the States is a tall order for anyone, even Google. But Spotify has the advantage of already having established its dominance in Europe, where it has something in the neighborhood of 10 million users. Better yet, those users already appear to be buying into another aspect of Spotify that makes it both appealing and unique — a multi-tiered subscription option. Basically, Spotify is available as a free service. But, for just $4.99 a month, you can get all the music you want without any of those annoying ads. And if you upgrade to $9.99 a month, Spotify offers an app that allows streaming to any mobile device. In addition, like many of the other clouds competing for market share, Spotify sells MP3 downloads, just like iTunes. And, thanks to the clout the company already has in Europe, Spotify hasn't had much trouble getting American labels to hop on board.

       "I go on Pitchfork a lot," Stanbach explains, referring to the on-line music review site. "Even though I don't always trust their music criticism, they do make good recommendations. And albums that have just come out and are from bands I wouldn't think that Spotify would have in their catalog are on there. There are very few things I haven't been able to find."

       There are, however, a few artists who haven't been so quick to warm to Spotify, and whose music you won't find there. As "Digital News" reported last week, the Black Keys refused Spotify, as well as Rhapsody and Rdio, access to their new "El Camino." Coldplay and Mac Miller are two other artists who have said no to the clouds. And therein may lie the rub: if iTunes has downloads to offer that other sites can't stream, it could relegate Spotify to the secondary status that most of the other cloud-based services now occupy.

       "The problem with Spotify comes down to royalties," explains Walter McDonough, a Boston-based lawyer who is the general counsel and one of the founders of the Future of Music Coalition, a DC think tank that studies music and technology issues. McDonough, who's also on the board of the Sound Exchange, an organization that collects royalties from webcasts and satellite broadcasting, believes that artists, labels, and songwriters will grow increasingly disenchanted with Spotify and similar services because the revenue just isn't there. "It would take a substantial amount of activity with Spotify to equal the same types of royalties that you get from the sale of CDs," he explains. "It's not like I make a dollar over here, I make a dollar over there. It's more like, I make a dollar over here and I make ten cents over there. You'd have to have a lot of Spotify subscribers to make up that kind of difference. I just think that artists and labels are going to get to a point where it's really not in their interest to be part of this."

       It's hard to imagine on-line streaming going away any time soon. The cat, so to speak, is way, way out of the bag on that one. But that might not be the disaster that some labels and artists believe it to be. "I think services like Spotify might actually help the music industry," Stanbach muses. "I mean, you're never going to be able to stop certain people from trying to get music for free. People have been pirating music since they had tape recorders. It's just never going to go away. But, I think Spotify can help the music industry by presenting the music to people in a way that they're allowed to listen to it on their own terms and then they can decide what they want to purchase."

       The ultimate fate of Spotify and similar online services may come down to how willing people are to pay subscription fees. It's something Stanbach has already been pondering. "I was arguing with my friend the other day about that," he admits. "And I think that I would pay the five dollars a month to get rid of the ads. If I could afford it, I'd also pay more to get it on my phone and be able to listen to music off-line. One of the reasons is that I really want to make sure that Spotify is going to be around. If they get the financial support, I think that would help make sure they survive."
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2011/dec/13/spotify-streams-americas-digital-clouds-ar-1541753/ 

THE BLACK KEYS

The Black Keys move beyond blooze with El Camino

by Matt Ashare

The Black Keys outdo themselves on the new El Camino

It was far, far too easy when the Black Keys emerged in 2002 to see the duo as essentially the flip side to the stripped-down blues-inflected rawk the White Stripes had by then already coined and, well, begun making a mint out of. Jack and Meg White came from the terminally recessed Motor City; Keys' guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney spent their teens in the industrial wasteland of Akron, Ohio, a city best know for supplying Detroit auto manufacturers with, ah, tires. It was a parallel too perfect to pass up; as the good folks at GM might have said, "If the steel-belted radial fits, drive it."

       But locked in the bloozy grooves of the Black Keys' first three rapidly released albums — 2002's The Big Come Up, 2003's Thickfreakness, and 2004's Rubber Factory — was an inconvenient truth that had nothing to do with carbon emissions. To keep the automotive metaphor alive for one more line, the gutbucket Black Keys were clearly driving on a different highway to hell than the schticky, if somewhat more colorful, White Stripes. If the Whites were building up to the spectacle of epic Jimmy Page guitar heroics, the Blacks, for all their grounding in the same Mississippi Delta mud that Zeppelin took off from, also had at least one foot firmly planted in the garage where amped-up ’60s psychedelia was fashioned from spare parts left over from the original British Invasion.

The Black Keys, El Camino (Nonesuch)

       Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an oversimplification. But I ain't hating on the White Stripes, so cut me some slack. Besides, along with the blues standard "Leavin' Trunk," the Black Keys actually covered one of my favorite Beatles tunes, "She Said, She Said," on The Big Come Up. Seriously, check it out. And they paid tribute to twisted Seattle garage-punks the Sonics with a wigged-out, fuzztoned version of their take on the Richard Berry classic "Have Love, Will Travel" on Thickfreakness. And. . . well, you get the point, right? I know, I know, they've also made a habit out of doing tunes by the late, great Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough, but I'm pretty sure that just proves my point. As for Jack White: he had to start a whole other band, the Raconteurs, when he got the itch to play popmeister.

       Still not hating on the Stripes. But, while Jack's been playing producerman in Nashville and popping up from time to time on projects like this year's Danger Mouse-helmed faux soundtrack album Rome, Auerbach and Carney have just kept trucking along, artfully adding new sonic twists to their well-worn bag of tricks at every stop along the way. The latest, the new El Camino, was recorded after the duo relocated to Nashville, and, it's the second they've produced in collaboration with a DJ mashup master turned analog audiophile who goes by the name of Danger Mouse.

       It's almost as if, for some perverse purpose, they've embraced the whole White/Black narrative. But that's beside the point because, as ridiculous as it might be to insist that El Camino represents a major artistic breakthrough for the Black Keys — particularly after the multiple Grammy-winning breakthrough of last year's "Brothers" — that's exactly where I'm headed here. Brothers, for all its trippy trappings, found the band self-consciously revisiting their r&b roots on a road trip to Muscle Shoals. With Danger Mouse back on board, El Camino distills the very best of what's bluesy about the Black Keys, and then builds on that with plenty of keyboards by one B. Burton (a/k/a Danger Mouse), thumping basslines, a trio of female background singers, and I swear I hear some vintage E Street Band glockenspiel behind the massed vocals, chainsaw guitar, and the muscular drums of the shuffling first single, "Lonely Boy," and the raw, melodic surge of "Dead and Gone." 

       It's a bit like Auerbach, Carney, and Burton have found their way to Phil Spector's legendary "wall of sound" without sacrificing any of the grit that's defined the Black Keys since their inception. "Gold on the Ceiling" takes a riff that ZZ Top would be proud to call their own, delivers it with a little T-Rex glam swagger, and outfits it with a soulful if somewhat nonsensical chorus ("Gold on the ceiling/I ain't blind/It's just a matter of time/Before you steal it/It's alright/Ain't guarding my high"). Auerbach, who tends to go for cadence over depth when it comes to lyrics, opens "Little Black Submarine" (it's about a girl, not a boat, or maybe just a sly nod in the general direction of the Beatles) accompanying himself with a fingerpicked acoustic figure that carries just a whisper of "Stairway to Heaven," before the track begins its slow build to full-on blooze-rock bliss, replete with hammering Bonham drums and big, burly powerchords. Auerbach may even be channeling Jimmy Page in the outro solo, but he does so with a certain raw subtlety.

       Ultimately, what distinguishes El Camino is the adventurous attitude the Black Keys bring to making what, at essence, is simply really great, unpretentious rock and roll. Nothing more, and nothing less. They're rootsy without being reverent, fun without being flippant, and they achieve a certain heaviness without resorting to hard-rock cliche. That may not seem like much. But there just aren't many bands you can say that about.

GORILLAZ

Damon Albarn delivers an actual singles collection from the virtual Gorillaz 

By Matt Ashare

November 30, 2011

The Burg

Gorillaz, The Singles Collection 2001-2011 (Virgin)

I had every intention of of approaching Gorillaz new ten-year retrospective compilation The Singles Collection 2001-2011 as purely a musical entity — just fifteen tracks from the "virtual" band's three proper studio albums, including two remixes. But then I found myself actually stranded on or in "Plastic Beach," Gorillaz's interactive virtual recording studio complex, which is actually located at the band's website. Okay, so it's essentially a role-playing game, and I'm still stuck trying to identify the various captains (so far I've got Captain Crunch, Captain America, Captain Cook, and a handful of others) on the "Captains Wall" in the study, although I will confess that from time to time I wander over to the fish tank to drop little nuggets of a Spam-like substance to a hungry little bugger swimming around in there just to pick up some points.

       Perhaps I should backtrack a bit. When Gorillaz got off the ground back in 2000, it was billed as a multi-media collaboration between Damon Albarn, the cheeky frontman of ’90s Brit-pop sensation Blur, comic book artist Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl fame, and SF hip-hop producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura — an eclectic, brainy bunch, to be sure. To further diversify, Albarn brought Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Franz, Cibo Matto multi-instrumentalist Miho Hatori, rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien, and a couple of Nakamura's pals, DJs Deltron 3030 and Kid Koala, along for the first Gorillaz studio adventure, a self-titled 2001 album that merged hip-hop beats, Brit-pop hooks, dubby production, and playful programming into something both unique and accessible to the tune of roughly 7 million units moved worldwide. Yet, in typically puckish fashion, Albarn asked to have Gorrilaz withdrawn for consideration after it was nominated for Britain's prestigious Mercury Prize.

       Meanwhile, Hewlett set about creating characters, storylines, and, in very Tank Girl fashion, an entire dystopic world for Gorillaz. The band's titular frontman, singer/keyboardist/guitarist 2-D, would appear to be an Albarn avatar — a black-eyed, spiky-haired, nihilistic punk with mischief on his mind. And then there's tall, dark, roguishly handsome bassist Murdoc; guitar ace Noodle, a little Japanese grrrl who looks like she was plucked straight out of a futuristic Anime series; and, on drums, a rather large b-boy who goes by the name of Russel. Along with the dozens of futuristic videos Hewlett's produced for his creations — including one for each of the tracks on The Singles Collection — there's a 304-page band biography (Rise of the Ogre), and several DVDs documenting the various "phases" of Gorillaz (there have been three, one for each studio album).

       For all of Hewlett's stylistic flash, it's still an awful lot to get one's mind around, particularly for an entity that doesn't really exist. And yet, you kinda have to admire the lengths to which Albarn and Hewlett have gone in marketing a project that, at its core, is essentially a commentary on how art and music are branded in the digital age. In 2004, they went so far as to create a viral marketing campaign at rejectfalseicons.com based around the line "reject false icons" from the "Rock It" single. But I won't get into that here. . .

       If you're not sure whether you've ever heard a Gorillaz tune, chances are you have: the upbeat dance track "Feel Good Inc.," featuring the members of De La Soul sparring maniacally with a melancholy Albarn, wasn't just one of the better charting singles on Gorillaz's 2005 album Demon Days, it also formed the basis for one of Apple's more successful iPod ad campaigns. (If you're a gamer — video, that is — then there are a couple of other tracks on The Singles Collection that are likely to sound familiar.) And, just last year, Albarn made the Apple connection again when he produced an entire downloadable Gorillaz disc, The Fall, using an iPad and featuring, among others, former Clash guitarist and bassist Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, who'd also been part of a touring version of Gorillaz.

       All the extras — from Jones and Simonon, to rapper Mos Def and r&b singer Bobby Womack (they turn up together on the spacey techno-funk single "Stylo"), to the cast of characters Hewlett has created — have threatened, at times, to overshadow the substance of Albarn's Gorillaz, namely the songs themselves. And, make no mistake, Albarn is the primary musical force behind Hewlett's cartoon caricatures. Indeed, the chronologically arranged Singles Collection essentially traces the evolution of Albarn's clever take on pomo hip-pop, which is often every bit as peculiarly British as was Blur's brand of guitar-based rock. That's especially true on a track like "DARE," a blue-eyed soul number with falsetto vocals that features intermittent declamations by former Happy Mondays mumbler Shaun Ryder, and the more hip-hoppity breakfast treat "Superfast Jellyfish," a techno twister that pairs De La Soul with Welsh singer Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals.

       And then there's the relatively straightforwardly reflective "On Melancholy Hill," a melodic mid-tempo number that finds Albarn on hooky terrain that's not much of a leap from where he once stood with Blur. Maybe that's really the point of having a virtual band to hide behind: ultimately, it gives Albarn the freedom to take Gorillaz in whatever direction he choses, even if that means handing the microphone over to a relatively unknown Manchester soul singer named Daley for the yearning "Doncamatic," a disco throwback that's also Gorillaz most recent single.

       As for me, I'm still trying to conquer the "Captains Wall" so that I can move on to the next level of "Plastic Beach."

AU REVIOUR R.E.M.

R.E.M. bow out with a two-CD career retrospective

By Matt Ashare

November 16, 2011

The Burg

R.E.M., Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 (Warner Bros.)

R.E.M. dropped two bombshells this year. Back in March, the enigmatic big little band who put Athens, Georgia, on the musical map when they emerged three decades ago, released Collapse Into Now, their 15th album in 31 years, and one that may very well stand as one of the best in their long and storied career. Then, in late September, singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Pete Buck, and bassist Mike Mills posted this on the R.E.M. website: "As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening."

       I suppose we could have seen — or heard — the break-up coming. Not once, but twice, Stipe barks the line, "It's just like me to overstay my welcome, man," on the defiant "All the Best," the second track and one of the stand-outs on Collapse Into Now. And, the song's undulating chorus, bolstered by some vintage Buck arpeggios, finds Stipe proclaiming, "Let's sing and rhyme/Let's give it one more time/Let's show the kids how to do it/Fine, fine, fine."

       Then again, R.E.M. have seemed on the verge of collapse, or perhaps merely disintegration, a number of times since 1997, when original drummer Bill Berry quit, leaving his three former compatriots to drift through downers like 1998's Up and 2001's amorphous Reveal. But by 2008, with the release of the revved-up and aptly titled Accelerate, R.E.M. appeared to be back on solid ground, playing with purpose and a renewed sense of urgency. That sense of purpose clearly carried over to Collapse Into Now, an album that plays to so many of the band's strengths, from the soaring powerchord rock ("Discoverer"), to mandolin-laced melancholy ("Überlin"), to strum-and-drone ambience ("Blue").

       Not bad for a swan song. And, yet, there's more. As we approach a year that started with Buck guesting on The King Is Dead, the Decemberists' big breakthrough album, we've finally got something along the lines of a definitive R.E.M. retrospective, the career-spanning, two-CD Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011. I say "finally" because, while there have been over half a dozen previous compilations, the band's catalog – and, in a sense, their career itself — had, until now, been split between the five albums and one EP released by the semi-independent label IRS in the ’80s, and everything that came after the band signed to Warner Bros. in 1988, the year the radio-friendly Green came out.

       Part Lies. . . — a 40-track, chronological trip from the beginning to the end that includes three previously unreleased tracks recorded after Collapse Into Now — may not come as a revelation to hardcore R.EM. fans. But, in its own way, it is revealing. R.E.M. have been credited time and time again with laying the groundwork for and even inventing what's come to be known as "indie-rock." But you get a visceral sense of what that really means when you go back and listen to their earliest recordings. The lush rush of "Gardening at Night" (from the band's debut EP Chronic Town) and soft surge of "Radio Free Europe" (from their first album, Murmur) surely inspired imitators. But what made R.E.M. so unique in the early ’80s had as much to do with their stance as with their sound. They didn't just cut against prevailing trends in realm of commercial pop; they also didn't conform to the loud, fast rules of the punk/hardcore underground.

       In that sense — by making music that was both "different" and accessible — they pursued a third path to success on their own terms. That may not seem particularly radical now, with bands like the Arcade Fire and the Decemberists making a go of it in whatever’s left of a “mainstream.” But it was essentially unheard of when R.E.M. began their gradual ascent with odd little songs like the slightly twangy “So. Central Rain” and the yearning “Fall On Me.”

       Even after R.E.M. had established themselves as an arena-ready act with singles like the upbeat “Stand” and the dewy “Everybody Hurts,” they retained their eccentricity, penning the Andy Kaufman ode “Man on the Moon” and turning an odd incident involving Dan Rather into the hook for the chart-topping “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” The under two-minutes of the quirky “A Month of Saturdays,” one of the three new tracks here, and the Collapse Into Now rocker “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter” are a timely reminder, in the wake of the break-up, that, if nothing else, R.E.M. never settled for normal. That’s the story Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 tells. And, it is a compelling one.