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R.E.M.: Accelerate

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 2008.03.31
Time:
 34:39
Category: Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Jacknife Lee & R.E.M.
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.remhq.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Living Well Is the Best Revenge (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:11
[2] Man-Sized Wreath (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:32
[3] Supernatural Superserious (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:23
[4] Hollow Man (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:39
[5] Houston (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:05
[6] Accelerate (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:33
[7] Until the Day Is Done (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:08
[8] Mr. Richards (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 3:46
[9] Sing for the Submarine (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 4:50
[10] Horse to Water (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:18
[11] I'm Gonna DJ (P.Buck/M.Mills/M.Stipe) - 2:07

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Peter Buck - Guitars, Producer
Michael Stipe - Vocals, Packaging, Producer
Mike Mills - Bass Guitar, Vocals, Producer

Scott McCaughey - Bass
Bill Rieflin - Drums

Owen Lewis - Concert Master
Jarrod Nestibo - Concert Master

Jacknife Lee - Audio Production, Producer
Sam Bell - Engineer, Mixing
Tom McFall - Engineer
Rob Stefanson - Assistant Engineer
Simon Wall - Assistant Engineer
Dani Castelar - Assistant Engineer
John C.F. Davis - Mastering
DeWitt Burton - Technical Assistance
Bob Whittaker - Technical Assistance
Bertis Downs - Advisor
David Bell - Office Coordinator
Chris Bilheimer - Office Coordinator, Packaging
Mercer Brockenbrough Davis - Office Coordinator
Sarah Petit Frierson - Office Coordinator
Amy Hairston - Office Coordinator

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded in 2007, Armoury Studios, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Grouse Lodge Studios, County Westmeath, Ireland; and Seney-Stonewall Chapel, Athens, Georgia, United States; additional recording in Olympia Theatre, Dublin, Ireland and Mike Mills' home in Athens, Georgia.



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.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



In a lot of ways, the R.E.M. story ended with 1996's underrated New Adventures in Hi-Fi. That was the final R.E.M. disc to feature drummer Bill Berry, and in retrospect, Berry brought a lot more to the band than simply his drumming. But that hasn't stopped R.E.M from awkwardly furthering the plot. First came the often pretty but not quite rewarding Up. Next, the pleasant but uneven Reveal, and then Around the Sun, which even most hardcore fans disdained as lackluster at best.

But if rock-star longevity is at least partially political, the savvier-than-ever R.E.M. took it upon themselves to control their message. As the band's studio output dragged, it presented itself as a revitalized live outfit, turning out inspired performances that seemed wildly disproportionate to its increasingly dull LPs. Reveal didn't warrant a tour, but tellingly, the band's 2006 greatest-hits collection did, and on stage, R.E.M. relished the opportunity to disprove naysayers with blistering sets that spanned their entire career.

Accelerate is the name of R.E.M.'s new album, the band's 14th, and it attempts to port that newfound vigor to the studio, not just by trading longtime producer Pat McCarthy (on board since 1998's Up) for U2 associate Jacknife Lee, but also by paring down the excess and sharpening the focus. Accelerate might as well be called Reverse, as it self-consciously aspires to recapture the spirit (if not necessarily the sound) of R.E.M.'s prime. Throughout its 11 songs and 35 minutes, only two tracks top the four-minute mark, and many run less than three. But velocity is not the same thing as vitality, and brevity is not the same thing as urgency. Accelerate ultimately isn't so much a back-to-basics move as a redefinition of what "basic" even means to an arena rock band. Accelerate's broad strokes, big riffs, and beefy production (the album was reportedly recorded in "just" nine weeks) are admirable, as is the disc's concision, but its success is still more as a step forward than a slam dunk.

Still, the very fact that R.E.M. recognized a problem and made an effort to remedy it is pretty impressive from a band of their stature. You can immediately hear the results on the lead song "Living Well Is the Best Revenge": Jacknife Lee has given the track (and the rest of the album) a refreshing sense of grit that's at odds with McCarthy's fussier studio constructions. Peter Buck's guitar rings and chimes with a layer of aggression one step beyond that of Monster, the band's previous "rock" record. Drummer Bill Rieflin plays with a Ministry-honed power, Mike Mills' backing vocals are absolutely key, and Michael Stipe's vocals are gruff, pissed off, and mixed low enough to make the lyrics tricky to make out.

But "Man-Sized Wreath" is no match for that airless rush - its vague 60-isms might make a solid B-side, but it's hardly a continuation of the opener's call to arms. The same can be said of the slick, safe single "Supernatural Superserious", the kind of song R.E.M. could write in its collective sleep. "Hollow Man", aside from its piano intro misdirection, might as well be the Gin Blossoms, Counting Crows, or any other middle of the road band R.E.M. influenced. "Houston" is about as weird as R.E.M. allows themselves to get these days, but against the odds the track's a highlight. It's a curious 6/8 dirge adorned with what sounds like a wheezing organ, featuring some nicely enigmatic lyrics and a musical toughness that updates the insular world the band introduced with Automatic for the People. Again, like "Living Well Is the Best Revenge", it unfortunately highlights the relative mundaneness of the next two songs, the title track and "Until the Day Is Done".

Accelerate make a surprise finish, though, with its last four songs pushing the band to fresh places. "Mr. Richards" is a vaguely blurry hybrid ballad that hints at shoegaze, invoking the band's staid studio experiments but connecting them to the group's more aggressive origins. Similarly, the self-referential "Sing for the Submarine" recalls an Up-era waltz while name-dropping some blasts from R.E.M.'s more distant past. "Horse to Water" is pure rush, just over two minutes of condensed energy unlike anything R.E.M. has done to date, a kick in the nuts to anyone not impressed by what came before it. And as closers go, "I'm Gonna DJ" is an oddball but memorable choice, perfectly selected for its gonzo agitation.

If you forgot the last couple of R.E.M. discs as soon as they were released, love it or not, "I'm Gonna DJ" and much of what precedes it at least ensures that Accelerate won't be forgotten quite as quickly. But, like any act of rehabilitation, it's no seismic shift, just a move in the right direction. It's as if the band strived for resonance but settled for a satisfactory glimmer of renewed relevance.

Joshua Klein - March 31, 2008
© 2015 Pitchfork Media Inc.



When their original drummer, Bill Berry, quit in 1997,R.E.M. became more than "a three-legged dog," as singer Michael Stipefamously put it at the time. Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bassistMike Mills actually turned into a pair of trios, two very differentbands, for the next ten years. One was the studio R.E.M. of Up, Revealand Around the Sun: wounded but determined, making a stately, reflectivepop rich in psychedelic luster and heavy with ballads about faith anddoubt. Then there was the concert R.E.M. Armed with longtime secondguitarist Scott McCaughey and, in recent years, ex-Ministry drummer BillRieflin, Stipe, Buck and Mills charged the musical exploration andinternal debate on those records with the dirty-silver jangle andget-in-the-van surge of R.E.M.'s quartet-era classics, such as 1986'sLifes Rich Pageant and 1987's Document.

Accelerate is the first studioalbum by that post-Berry stage band, and it is one of the best recordsR.E.M. have ever made. Much of Accelerate was cut in live-band takes andeven tested onstage during a run in Dublin last summer, and it shows.Guitars are front and center, in slashing-chord and rusted-arpeggiocrossfires, as if you've got R.E.M.'s 1982 EP Chronic Town and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks spinning in your CD tray at the sametime. "Man-Sized Wreath," "Supernatural Superserious" and "Horse toWater" rattle and zoom like buried treasures from an old club-tour setlist. And there is nothing soft or shy about the slower darkness either.In "Houston," a stark snapshot of post-Katrina exile ("If the stormdoesn't kill me/The government will"), crude fuzz drones and ham-fistedorgan chords roll over Buck's acoustic guitar and the fighter's will inStipe's voice ("I was taught to hold my head high. ... Make the bestof what today has") like oily floodwater.

But the R.E.M. on Accelerateis also the one I saw at New York's Madison Square Garden right after2004's Vote for Change Tour — and two nights after Bush'sre-election. Bummed but unbowed, they opened the show with loud, fastdefiance — "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I FeelFine)" — and they do the same thing here, with "Living Well Is theBest Revenge." "Don't turn your talking points on me/History will set mefree/The future is ours, and you don't even rate a footnote," Stipesings in a rapid, ecstatic near-shout over flying fists of guitar andracing bass and drums. And that's just the start of the blowback."Nature abhors a vacuum/But what's between your ears?" he snaps in"Man-Sized Wreath," a bitter laugh at empty pomp and sound-bitepatriotism, aimed at sheep and herders alike. And whoever "Mr. Richards"is, he gets his just desserts — "Mr. Richards, your conviction/Hadus cheering in the kitchen" — served with Buck and McCaughey'sbristling-glam guitars.

Stipe has not sounded this viscerally engaged inhis singing and poetically lethal in his writing since the twilight ofthe Reagan administration. But he is not merely protesting the mess ofthe nation. Accelerate is total-victory rock, Stipe making promises heknows he can keep — "You weakened shill . . . Savor your dyingbreath" ("Living Well") — because he's not alone. The apocalypseis obvious in "Sing for the Submarine," an urban-holocaust update ofCrosby, Stills and Nash's hippie-escape plan "Wooden Ships." So is thestrength in numbers. "It's all a lot less frightening/Than we would'vehad it be," Stipe insists, as Mills swoops way behind him inguardian-angel harmony. (Mills' vocals, too often taken for granted, arefrequent literal high points on the album, the reassuring sunlight onStipe's gritty delivery.) And in "Hollow Man," Stipe concedes his ownneeds and fuck-ups, then calls for help — "Corner me and make mesomething" — in a stunning mix of tender-piano ballad andbig-guitar chorus that sums up the commitment that makes true loves,democracies and great rock bands possible.

Ultimately, the best thingabout Accelerate is that R.E.M. sound whole again, no longerthree-legged but complete in their bond and purpose. "Music will providethe light you cannot resist," Stipe crows at the end of the record, inthe atomic frivolity of "I'm Gonna DJ." And you can believe him — because he and his band believe in themselves again.

David Fricke  - April 3, 2008
RollingStone.com



R.E.M.’s last album, Around the Sun, stays on my shelf only for the sake of catalog completeness; it’s been freed once or twice since 2004 to be dusted off and quickly reassessed: Did a band this important really release something so incomprehensibly dull and unrelentingly bored with itself? Well, they did. And Michael Stipe — the one singing and wearing raccoon eye shadow lately — even acknowledged the misstep, admitting that the group had lost focus, and that he, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills “didn’t talk… for a couple of records.” The slow-moving, keyboard-heavy, adult-contemporary-leaning Sun felt like a sputtering roadside breakdown for a band that was running on fumes. But the critical and commercial shrugs that met the album seem to have had one overwhelmingly positive effect: They gave R.E.M. something to prove.

Sneak peek at our April cover story on R.E.M.
Nothing to do, then, but hit the gas and hope for the best, a method Accelerate — R.E.M.’s 14th studio album — establishes right there in the title. Whether inspired by their own stagnation, market forces, or producer Jacknife Lee, the decision to lift the rock restraining order worked wonders: Accelerate corrals 35 minutes of the fastest songs Stipe and Co. have written in decades, all performed with a sense of joyous purpose that clearly comes from a “Fuck it, let’s just do this” attitude. They haven’t sounded this surprised with themselves since 1998’s Up, haven’t made an album this consistent since 1992’s Automatic for the People, and haven’t redlined so engagingly since 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant, whose terrific “These Days” lives on in spirit here.

And though populated almost exclusively by snarling guitars and hell-bent drums, Accelerate doesn’t suffer any whiffs of desperation like 1994’s half-decent, glam-rock youth grab, Monster. Instead, here’s a band rediscovering the shadings and strengths of rock’n’roll elementalism.Sure, album bookends “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” and “I’m Gonna DJ” share the same basic ingredients and roughly the same tempo, but the former looks lovingly at R.E.M.’s distant rockin’ past, while the near-ecstatic latter (“Death is pretty final / I’m collecting vinyl / I’m gonna DJ at the end of the world!”) offers conclusive proof they haven’t lost their inspiration completely in recent years.

More than just velocity lifts Accelerate: It slows for the requisite Important Ballad (“Until the Day Is Done”), a political brooder more akin to “Drive” than “Everybody Hurts,” and the terrific, mid-tempo “Hollow Man,” with the most satisfying R.E.M. chorus in eons. Still, Accelerate will be rightfully championed as the defibrillator that shocked a once-great band back to its senses. R.E.M. lay no claim to being the biggest rock group on earth –leave that empty title to their contemporary U2 — but if they need an award, here’s one that fits: Most Improved.

Josh Modell - March 1, 2008
www.spin.com



In the decade since the departure of drummer Bill Berry, R.E.M. could seem at times schizophrenic. Their albums of the era, which veered from the experimentalism of Up and reaffirmation of Reveal to 2004's more diffuse, reflective Around the Sun, often stood in stark contrast to the vibrancy of their live act. But here the alt-rock godfathers have resolved that dichotomy with their most focused and satisfying album in over a decade; a collection that doesn't so much revisit the bracing ethos of the band's '80s coming-of-age, as boil it down to its essence and supercharge it with the energy of their contemporary stage shows. That sensibility is evident from the opening track, "Living Well's the Best Revenge," where Peter Buck's aggressive, distortion-drenched riffs and Michael Stipe's gruff snarl set the tone for "Mansized Wreath," "Horse to Water," and "Supernatural Serious"; rockers that bristle with the abandonment and aggressive energy of a band half their tenure. Yet it's no mere blast-from-the-past. The inclusion of the band's recent touring musicians (Scott McCaughey on second guitar and drummer Bill Rieflin) into the session mix, as well as working out much of the material live onstage in Dublin, has yielded something more sonically akin to R.E.M. 2.2. Stipe's penchant for the lyrically opaque has been largely supplanted by an edgy, articulate passion that variously explores "Houston'"s displaced Katrina refugees, the bluegrass-tinged "Until the Day is Done," and the more typical, quiet self-examination of "Hollow Man," before exploding in the album's unlikely, upbeat elegy "I'm Gonna DJ," where singer and band find renewed hope in not only music, but themselves.

Jerry McCulley - Amazon.com



Accelerate is the fourteenth studio album by the American alternative rock band R.E.M., released on March 31, 2008 in Europe, and on April 1 in North America. Produced with Jacknife Lee, Accelerate was intended as a departure from the 2004 album Around the Sun. R.E.M. previewed several of the album's tracks during a five-night residency at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, and recorded the album in a nine-week schedule.

Accelerate was the band's highest-charting release since 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with first week sales of 115,000 copies, went on to sell over 353,000 copies in the U.S. and became the band's eighth album to top the British album charts. "Supernatural Superserious" was released as the album's first single. The second single "Hollow Man", was released in June 2008, with "Man-Sized Wreath" following in August. According to Billboard, Accelerate stayed 18 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart.

Accelerate has been generally well received by critics, receiving a score of 79 out of 100 on Metacritic. Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five stars, with critic David Fricke praising the group's aggressive sound, writing, "Stipe has not sounded this viscerally engaged in his singing and poetically lethal in his writing since the twilight of the Reagan administration." NME reviewer Alan Woodhouse, similarly applauding the group's return to their previous sound, gave Accelerate an eight out of ten rating, and concluded, "Accelerate is by some considerable distance R.E.M.'s best and most cohesive album since [former drummer] Bill Berry left, and crucially echoes a time when they made their best music, if not necessarily their biggest-selling." Q reviewer Keith Cameron wrote that unlike Around the Sun, "Accelerate is the sound of a band having enjoyed a good word with themselves — and us." Cameron described the album's first three songs as "powerful as the first half of 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant," but commented that the album suffers through a "midway dip that afflicts even the best R.E.M. album."

Time reviewer Josh Tyrangiel praised guitarist Buck's "resurgence" and "propulsive riffs," but also wrote, "R.E.M.'s 14th album never quite generates the moody atmospherics of their first 10; it's a little hard to lose yourself in something that doesn't pause long enough for you to get lost." Uncut gave the album three out of five stars. Reviewer John Mulvey stated, "Accelerate is a simple, pragmatic record built on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, even the best bands have to retrace their steps, if only to remind themselves what they're really good at."

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