Another "back in classic form" review for Accelerate

by Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

You can say Accelerate is R.E.M.'s best album in years (and many already have), but that's not setting the bar very high. Even band members admit they've coasted lately: According to Spin magazine, guitarist Peter Buck won't even utter the name of the most recent disappointment, Around the Sun.

Fans will be pleased today when Accelerate hits the stores and enters the upper echelon of the band's catalog. It's not a stone classic like Document or Automatic for the People, but with echoes of those great discs, Accelerate has enough strong R.E.M. songs to make it a return to classic form after the mushy, meandering albums of late. Plus, these songs sound great live; most were road-tested in concert.

The single Supernatural Superserious has been all over the radio and sets the tone for the 11 taut, mostly high-energy, laser-focused rock songs on the disc.
When the band is completely in sync, the results soar. Living Well's the Best Revenge jump-starts the album, with Mike Mills providing a frantic but melodic bass line as singer Michael Stipe sings with abandon, warning, "Don't turn your talking points on me."

Mr. Richards is a warm, melodic guitar song confronting a wrongdoer about taking responsibility for his criminal actions, sternly warning him, "We know what's going on." A government official? A CEO? It's never made clear. Mansized Wreath sneers at the political scene and the culture at large: "Turn on the TV and what do I see? / a pageantry of empty gestures all lined up at me." Houston deals with the aftermath of the displaced victims of Katrina, a cause that Stipe has long embraced.

The political is here, but so is the personal. "I've been lost inside my head," Stipe confesses in Hollow Man. Sing for the Submarine is a bit subpar, and I'm Gonna DJ is a piece of satire aimed at the end of the world that just misses its target.

After a flat concert here back in 2004, I wrote, "Fans are sure that R.E.M. has another classic inside itself." It finally got here.

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