It seems like it took them over 10 years to recover from Bill Berry's departure, R.E.M. has finally made an album again that is gripping, focussed and typically R.E.M. No soppy ballads (almost) but loud guitars and typical harmonies and choruses. Listen to the kick-ass single 'Supernatural Superserious'!
The album is barely 35 minutes long. I had given up on them long again, listened to this out of curiosity (no, I will NOT do the same with Moby's new delivery....) and must say I was pleasantly surprised.

What do you say??

I say it's out next week on April 1st. I will buy it.

Not everyone downloads illegally dude.

good for you!

Who says I downloaded illegally or not? Maybe somebody has slipped me a (legal) copy? Maybe I have connections???

Anyways, the album is worth checking out!

This album is out now in NYC, some local shops got it in Today (thursday) for Tuesday, but street dates dont matter to the little stores because they buy direct from the label so that info is already in (dont believe that soundscan accounting bullshit). This is a great album from one of the most consistent bands of the last 25 years, with the exception of "UP" (though had some gems) REM has never let me down or not held my interest with a record.

I interestd in this release - does anybody who has heard it have a mini review to share?

abierman said:

LOL.Just messing with you. I love the single, definitely looking forward to it.

Just picked up The B-52's new album as well, the other Athens, Georgia band.

abierman said:

i say: me too!

i was just about ready to give up on rem. first disc that feels
like an actual album since monster (perhaps adventures in hifi)

love the way it sounds like all the "old" rem albums and still
manages to sound up to date and "new".

nice disc, very nice indeed.

lastdecember said:

Confirms that I'm really the only person in the world who believes that "Up" is REM's best album of the last 20 years. Only the IRS albums are better in my opinion.

so he comes out to admit he is gay right before an album launch. Great timing.. must want to some extra album sales

Sdldawn said:

yeah, cuz coming out has always helped album sales

Sdldawn said:

Yeah, except everyone's known that Michael Stipe was gay for the past 2 decades. Great marketing.


I won't listen until Tuesday when I buy it first thing in the AM. Very excited!

IstenSzek said:

I must say that I hated Monster....I didn't buy the 'we've made a punkrock-album' bullshit!!!!!

DiminutiveRocker said:

form allmusic.com:

For years, R.E.M. promised that their next album would be a rocker, an oath to fans that perhaps made sense during the early '90s, when they were exploring the pastoral fields of Out of Time and the gloomy folk of Automatic for the People, but in the years after Bill Berry's 1997 departure, the desire of longtime fans for the group to rock again was merely a code word for the wish that R.E.M. would sound like a band again. Apart from a few fleeting moments "The Great Beyond," their "Man in the Moon" re-write for the 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic, Man in the Moon; "Bad Day," a mid-'80s outtake revived for a greatest-hits album R.E.M. not only didn't sound like a band, but they seemed at odds with themselves and their very strengths, culminating in the amorphous, mummified Around the Sun, a record so polished and overworked it didn't sound a bit like R.E.M., not even like the art-pop outfit the band turned into after Berry's retirement. It was a situation so dire that the band recognized the need for corrective steering, so they stripped themselves down to bare-bones for 2008's Accelerate.

In every way Accelerate is the opposite of Around the Sun: at 36 minutes, it's defiantly lean, it's heavy on Peter Buck's guitars and Mike Mills backing vocals, its songs don't drift, they attack. Even the songs constructed on acoustics feel like they're rockers, maybe because they hearken back to the eerie, ramshackle grace of "Swan Swan H" whose riff echoes through both "Houston" and "Until the Day Is Done." This is not the only time that R.E.M. deliberately refers to the past on Accelerate, but reverential self-reference is the whole idea of this project: they're embracing their past, building upon the legacy and the very sound of such underground rock landmarks as Lifes Rich Pageant and Document. Not that this album could be mistaken for an exhumed classic from the '80s: Michael Stipe's lyrics are forthright and never elliptical, and the same could be said about the music, as it's sonically streamlined and precise, hallmarks of a veteran band. One of the benefits of being veterans is knowing how to create a record this focused, and Accelerate benefits greatly from its concentrated blast of guitars, as the brevity of the album makes R.E.M. seem vital even as they're dredging up the past. By no longer denying the jangle and pop that provided a foundation for the group's success, they sound like a band again.

Such praise dangerously threatens to oversell Accelerate, however, suggesting that the album has either the unearthly mystique of Murmur or the ragged enthusiasm of Reckoning when it has neither. This is a careful, studied album from a band that knew they were on the brink of losing their audience and, worse, their identity. Accelerate finds R.E.M. attempting to reconnect with their music, with what made them play rock & roll in the first place, instead of methodically resurrecting a faded myth. They reconnect handsomely, creating an album the can stand next to work from their peers, like Dinosaur Jr.'s exceptional comeback Beyond and Sonic Youth's casually vital Rather Ripped (whose "Incinerate" reverberates in the dissonant open-ended "Accelerate"). As comebacks go, that's relatively modest, but the very modesty of Accelerate is what makes it such a successful rebirth as R.E.M. no longer denies what they were or what they are, and, in doing so, they offer a glimpse of what they could be once again.

abierman said:

i don't know, i just consider it a sort of "dirty mind" style demo album
to contrast with the beautiful "automatic for the people".

IstenSzek said:

it was crap! After the critical acclaim of 'Out Of Time' & 'Automatic.....' they (read: Stipe) were taking theirselves way too seriously.....it was the heyday of Nirvana, Kurt & Courtney loved flirting with Stipe as if he was some sort of god.....Stipe loved it! Bang!!! And there was R.E.M.'s punkrock album..... It sucked!
[Edited 3/28/08 7:12am]

MendesCity said:

regardless of it is has or hasn't.. it's a good way to get his bland ass in the news..

abierman said:

yeah well i think it's great

Sdldawn said:

except that by now, stipe talking about his sexuality every time a new
album is released, is getting to be rather like prince saying he will
retire his hits after this tour everytime he holds a press conference
to announce a new tour.

IstenSzek said:

out of curiosity... does prince still play purple rain live after he announced it will never be played live again back in 04?

Sdldawn said:

yes, he played it in london

you know prince

There's been alot of REM bootlegs available in anticipation of this album on the net lately, & I look forward in purchasing my first R.E.M. album in years. Here's their gig from SXSW on streaming audio.

http://www.npr.org/templa...d=88759457

Also, U.S. fans, don't forget to catch their Austin City Limits performance to be broadcast in May.

SilverlakePhil said:

Phil!

DiminutiveRocker said:

Hey sweetie .I need to send you some Duran Duran footage I downloaded recently.

SilverlakePhil said:

That's a great website, some awesome podcasts on there!!!! Thanks!!!