Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Finally

R.E.M.'s new album hit today.

R.E.M. was one of my favorite bands in the later part of high school and through college. When I was the editor of the yearbook at EmbarassingTSU I largely put the book together listening to R.E.M.'s Monster, R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Alanis's Jagged Little Pill, and Soundgarden's Down on the Upside. Those four discs in heavy rotation and I could put in a ten-hour work session with sporadic pinball and MKII breaks and be ready for more.

Anyway, R.E.M. has sucked for the last decade once their drummer decided to go retire and live out Thomas Jefferson's charge to be a small, independent farmer. He was evidently very instrumental to the band making good music, because such a product was few and far between on the 3 or 4 discs they released after Hi-Fi.

Their new album, Accelerate, came out today and I am pleased to say that they are finally back. They may not be up to their former glory reached on I.R.S. records and their first couple of releases on Warner Bros., but they are mighty, mighty close. Peter Buck is playing the sort of stuff he did on Automatic for the People, and the Stipe/Mills harmony combo still clicks. Stipe still tries to be a bit too politically active, but this stuff is good.

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