R.E.M.: Accelerate

R.E.M.: Accelerate Fourteen years since their last number one record in the US, R.E.M. releases their fourteenth studio album Accelerate. After signing one of the largest record contracts of all times, a reported $80 million from Warner Brothers, their sales have steadily declined. They declined to the point where 2004's Around the Sun became the first R.E.M. record to not at least go gold. The years when R.E.M. was considered America's greatest rock band seemed so far away. Enter Jackknife Lee. The Grammy award winning producer was recommended to R.E.M. by the just as old but still more vital U2. Jackknife brought a change from long-time producer Pat McCarthy, Jackknife brought R.E.M. back from obscurity. Accelerate feels like an album filled with vitality. Peter Buck flexes his chops with booming arena rock guitars, while Mike Mills puts away the keyboards and focuses primarily on bass adding in his signature background vocals as needed. All the while, Michael Stipe is in rare form. His vocals make him sound like a kid in a candy store and not just any candystore, but the world's biggest candystore. His bandmates give him the perfect backdrop to fade into. While critics have praised the album as resembling New Adventures in Hi-Fi, it's hard for me to agree. NAIHF, as REM fans call it, was an experimental album recorded during sound checks and it included moody tunes like "E-bow the Letter" and "New Test Leper". Accelerate most closely resembles Document. Every song is a unique rocker, from the "It's the End of the World as We Know It" continuation of "I'm Gonna DJ" to the reassembled T-Rex "Supernatural Superserious". This record is not a return to form, its a re-invention of form. Just like after the folky outputs of Out of Time and Automatic for the People they released Monster, they now release Accelerate and beg the world to believe that after 28 year of music making they are still America's greatest rock band. Rating: 9.7/10 MP3: R.E.M. "Horse to Water" (YSI)