Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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58 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FINALLY, an R.E.M. record I don't have to be ashamed of., 16 Mar 2008
R.E.M. are back and this time, it's brilliant.
First impressions? Blown away. I literally danced around my bedroom at 2AM listening to it.
The opening trio of Living Well Is The Best Revenge, Man-Sized Wreath and sugarsweet single Supernatural Superserious makes for perhaps the best start to an R.E.M. record ever. I'm serious.
And the pace hardly lets up. Hollow Man starts off like a Coldplay cut, all mournful piano, before lifting into the sort of college rock, post-punk dance off the band used to make.
Houston, one of the shortest tracks the band have ever done, manages to sound experimental, sinister and hopeful all at the same time. Stipe's vocals are gruff and more buried in the mix than they have been in a decade, and his lyric writing returns to the abstract throughout.
Title track Accelerate is heavy and dark. It reminds me of Joy Division or Editors, but is unmistakeably R.E.M. The return of Mike Mills to backing vocals provides the album with some of its most impressive moments, particularly here. Until the Day Is Done is a callback to some of the material on Around the Sun, indignant and angry about the state of the world. The record seems to deal with hope and fear about the future. You get the impression that the band looks back at the past 25 years and thinks "What the hell's changed?". It's angry and bitter, but filled with little rays of sunshine and moments of beauty.
Mr. Richards provides a perfect example of this. Rallying against an evil-doer and listing his faults, the song suddenly picks up with a refrain of "We're the children of the choir, hey / And we know what's going on". This is matched with a beautiful bit of guitar work that turns it from a grungy dirge into something transcendental. Sing For The Submarine is almost, though thankfully not quite, a prog-rock track. It bounces all over the place and is the most forceful track this band have produced. Stipe self-references a couple of previous songs, which I thought would bug me, but actually serves to enhance that feeling of having a conversation with the past. This song really soars; I was expecting a meandering take, but Bill Rieflin, who, for all intents and purposes is now R.E.M.'s drummer has done wonders for this group.
Horse to Water sees Stipe tripping over his words again, which he hasn't done since It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine). This track is the only one that hasn't really grabbed me yet; it seems likes it's going nowhere in a hurry, although the chaotic ending promises to be a brilliant live moment. Rounding off the briskest set in the catalogue is I'm Gonna DJ. This is probably the goofiest, most laid-back track since The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite and has a bunged-up sounding Stipe promising to 'DJ at the end of the worrrrrld!'. A lot of people hate this track, but I think it's a fantastic and different way for them to end an album; it's fast, it's fun and it's basically saying "We're all doomed... anyone for a party?".
It's hard to talk about this album without referring to the past few R.E.M. records. I will defend Up and Reveal to the death, as necessary, if flawed records, which provided me with some of my all-time favourite songs by the band. They were quirky and different, if overlong and questionably sequenced. Around the Sun, the band's last record is harder to defend. Quite a few of the tracks had strong potential, but I once heard it described as an 'ivory tower' record; the band sat up in an expensive studio tweaking knobs and forgetting what they were really about.
Accelerate, then, is them jumping out of the window head-first and landing on two feet. It doesn't simply ape the past, or get stuck on repeat. It reminds everyone why R.E.M. ever mattered, but sounds urgent, sounds relevant and sounds like it belongs here and now. It reconnects with the past, of the hopes and fears you feel when you're younger and says "Let's do something about it!".
Incredible. Please, even if you've hated R.E.M. for the past ten years, give it a listen.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
REM are back., 21 April 2008
I must say I was surprised by this album. To say that the last couple of REM albums were disappointing would be an understatement. So I was relieved by this album (which I only bought out of long-term loyalty). It is the first album of theirs that I've really enjoyed since "Hi Fi". And better than that it is a ROCK album. The record is short, punchy, and very addictive. And as others will note there is both a return to form, and a welcome revisiting of some of their hey-day material. A new hey-day? Let's hope so!
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good album spoiled by atrocious mastering., 9 May 2008
This album is not as good as it could be. Like most other reviewers I agree this is the best REM album for some time. However, my beef is with the mastering. I can only listen to about three songs in a row due to the sonic bludgeoning that this CD inflicts on me. It really is physically tiring to be subjected to a virtually constant volume level on every song. Like others I'm frustrated at how this recording has been mastered. Every song is the same volume, every part of every song is the same volume, every guitar part is the same volume, thrashy guitar chords and guitar arpeggios are the same volume. Can't we have some light and shade? This is particulary draining to listen to. The whole recordings been turned into some sort of liquidised sonic mush where there's no lumpy bits and everything's the one gloopy texture. No doubt guitar/drum/bass etc parts were compressed when they were recorded, compressed further when they were mixed, and then the whole mix was probably compressed. .. leading to a unpleasant listening experience.
It would be better if the songs were allowed to breathe and not suffocated. Please let's have some music recorded with natural dynamics instead of squashing everything.
Most of the songs are great by the way...
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![Around The Sun [Digipak]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Z03SKQK4L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
