R.E.M. Entertainment Art “Accelerate” (Warner Brothers) Released April 1, 2008

Accelerate starts it off with a bang, something always good for any rock album. Track one’s “Living Well Is The Best Revenge” is a fast and loud song with lots of great classic R.E.M. style lyrics, fans will not be disappointed. The same can be said of “Accelerate” the album’s title track. Something about the way lead singer Micheal Stipe sings, makes even the most depressing song lyrics sound kind of happy. It is not his fault, many of the lyrics on the album are supposed to be hitting and bitter. Nevertheless, Stipe sings many of them in such an encouraging tone that the actual lyrics become secondary.

Take for instance the lyrics in “Supernatural Superserious” the chorus chimes out the words “and your cry and you cry” numerous times. Unfortunately the rather fast past of the song makes the words sound unnaturally happy instead of sad. The sad songs come later, as is to be expected from R.E.M. While nothing can compare with the extremely depressing “Everybody Hurts,” there are still some very hard hitters on the album.

One gets the impression that “Accelerate” is supposedly to a sort of call to arms for their listeners. There is an undercurrent of bitterness and disappointment with the state of society that runs throughout the whole album. That is never clearer, than on “Until The Day Is Done,” a song that plays like a military anthem gone wrong. The subtle beats of the drums resonate throughout capturing the full spirit of the song.

Accelerate is an odd sort of album for R.E.M., with only 11 songs (short for any band these days, especially a well established one) all of which are relatively short, the album plays like a singles mix. Many of the songs are relatively unrelated to one another and the album as a whole feels jumbled, often switching gears many times throughout. This is not a bad album at all, just not up to classic R.E.M. standards.

Strangely enough, the stand out song comes at the very end of the album. Track eleven’s “I Wanna DJ,” is an old school punk rock jam that comes completely out of nowhere. It is fast and loud and totally unlike anything I’ve heard in recent years from the band. It is as if they realized they had enough time left for one song and just had fun with it. No over thinking or underlying message here, just all out fun and the band pulls it off beautifully. It’s a song I look forward hearing live and a route they should try more often.

Still, you can’t count these boys from Athens, Georgia out. Perhaps if they take the approach they took for “I Wanna DJ” on a whole album, we may have another Life’s Rich Pageant, Document or Out of Time album. Now that’s an album I wait for in anticipation, I hear people murmuring already.

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