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By this point, of course, the cat's outta the bag. Unless you've been marooned on a vanishing iceberg dodging polar bears, most readers will have wind of this. An absence of advance copies and preview takes before a live Dublin audience lead to conjecture that 'Accelerate' was a return to form for R.E.M. Forget the lean flumps of 'Around The Sun' and 'Reveal', this will be like they never happened, this is going right back to their rock roots - another 'Life' Rich Pageant', and with Jacknife Lee on production to crank up the systems. Well, all is not hot air.
The gusto of the opening tracks 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge', 'Man-Sized Wreath' and 'Supernatural Superserious' puts paid to that. Like a bolt to the system, 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge' heads down the freeway blasting with stadium-sized garage-rock, Stipe still a deadringer for the memorable casual phrase - "...choking on the bones you tossed...", while the Green / Automatic For The People era of 'Man-Sized Wreath' assumes their speaking to the masses role - "...kick it out like a dancer/ like you just don't care...oh give me some...", while "...the humiliation/ of the teenage nation..." sings Stipe of a tale of teen angst on the riffing single 'Supernatural Superserious'.
Tracks like 'Hollow Man' show a let-up from the songwriting of old with a soggy biscuit of U.S. soft-rock that lacks the songwriting depth of Up's 'The Apologist', while a funereal organ cavorts through the gritty industrial 'Houston' like a panel-making factory with mandolin tweeting melodiously. Title track 'Accelerate' searches for the ripcord on a mid-album track that gauges the strengths of the album and finds them holding their ground. Time then for a departure into the folk-rock territory of 'Until The Day Is Done' with a state of the nation address, "...providence speaks in the face of the sun...notion's of glory and poor market gain...", while the grey 'Mr Richards' reprises a 'Mrs Robinson'-style everyman, "...pay attention/ pay attention...".
'Sing For The Submarine', meanwhile, sounds like a left-over from the cutting room floor of 'Around The Sun', yet warm by its' fires and you'll find a track with theatricality and polish as Buck and Mills take the track firmly in hand. The closing tracks 'Horse To Water' and live favourite 'Im Gonna DJ' finish with the flourish that opened, 'Horse To Water' like a U.S. Arctic Monkey's mosh-pit number with ricochet guitars and Stipe talking of friday night pub crawls gleaned from Dublin nights, and 'I'm Gonna DJ' putting paid to all apocalyptic shit-kicking with ambitions to play at the Final party on an Iggy & The Stooges styled rubicon - "...cos if heaven does exist with a kicking playlist/ I don't wanna miss it at the end of the woaarrld...hey steady/ hey steady steady/ I don't wanna go till I'm good and ready...", worth snapping up for this alone.
What you were expecting? As short as you were expecting? 34 minutes and the job's done. The strengths undoubtedly lie with the bombastic moments were Buck and Mills let rip and Stipe can bounce his songs in between, moments which lie at the head and tails. Less the defining album we expected, but an album that means R.E.M. can still raise a shindig and set the pulse racing.
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