early word: r.e.m.
(From 4pm – 6pm EST today, I’ll be on Newtown Radio with several other people talking about why we still love REM. Hope you’ll listen!)
R.E.M.
Collapse Into Now
[Warner Bros.]
Just two songs into R.E.M.’s 15th — that’s right, 15th — studio album, Michael Stipe goes self-referential: “I think I’ll sing in rhyme/ I’ll give it one more time/ I’ll show the kids how to do it, fine.” And then in the next verse, “It’s just like me to overstay my welcome, man.”
Whether or not, 30-plus years into their career, R.E.M. have overstayed their welcome, man, is a source of debate for greybeards whose hearts still skip a beat whenever they hear the phrase “Hib-Tone Single.” The arguments break down predictably: that they lost their way after they left I.R.S. (22 years ago!), or that they should have quit when Bill Berry did (about 10 years later). And then there are those — usually shy, occasionally defensive and always self-conscious — who are just happy to have some version of R.E.M. sticking around and releasing modestly satisfying records every couple of years as long as they keep the number of embarrassments — both public and artistic — to a minimum.
It’s that last set that Collapse Into Now is made for. Where 2008′s lean, snarling Accelerate functioned mainly as a defibrillator, Collapse is more measured; it’s diverse and dignified, a controlled but emphatic throat-clearing from the elder statesmen to remind you that they’re still in the room, and they can hear you talking shit.
Not that we needed reminding: While R.E.M. themselves have not exactly been killing it on Twitter, their presence has been felt in other ways. Just like it’s easy to spot U2‘s DNA in the deeply-felt stridency of Arcade Fire, R.E.M. set the template for that other strand of popular indie, a lineage that includes both the Decemberists’ eggheaded Book Report Rock and the National’s free-associative moodiness. (You could even argue that their reckless, early records birthed bands like Ohio’s Cloud Nothings whose punchy self-titled record often sounds like someone playing Chronic Town on the wrong speed.) And so if other people are, deliberately or otherwise, surveying R.E.M.’s history, it’s only fair that they get to have a go at it themselves.
In Collapse lurk the ghosts of every R.E.M. song of the last 15 years. The spiraling guitar pattern on psyched-up opener “Discoverer” recalls Green‘s similarly acid-eaten “I Could Turn You Inside Out”; “Uberlin,” about a teenage loner wandering around Germany, compensates for its terrible title with a stark bit of folk-rock that could be an answer song to “Drive”; and the searching “Oh My Heart” draws on the same heartsick longing as “New Test Leper.” (Sometimes the similarities are a bit too-close: album-closing spoken-word snoozer “Blue,” which features Patti Smith, is such a dead-ringer for Out of Time‘s “Country Feedback” it qualifies the group for a Fogerty-style self-plagiarism suit.) With one exception, every post-’90s R.E.M. record seemed written according to a particular spec — the noisy, sexy one; the bloopy, daring one; the limp, shitty one. The sole dissenter is New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and it’s to that record that the confident Collapse, in tone and in breadth, bears the closest resemblance.
As always, the group rises and falls on the whims of Michael Stipe. Never a likely rock frontman, Stipe was at his best as a lyricist when he compensated for his insecurities with Dadaist tone poems (and, later, cartoonishly inflated sexuality and a kind of confrontational homoeroticism). Of late, he’s become more of a raconteur; on Collapse, he writes obtuse fiction from the perspective of young misfits and occasionally scrapbooks events in his own life (in the first song, he’s drinking vodka and espresso while stumbling down Houston Street). He’s mercifully dialed back the hyper-literalism that sandbagged the group’s records in the mid ’00s; on Collapse, you groan at his occasional clunkers the way you sigh in disappointment when your kids spill grape juice on the carpet (“Mine Smell Like Honey”? Really, dude?) He even pulls off the unlikely trifecta of “Sharon Stone Casino/ Scarface Al Pacino/’74 Torino.” The group is abetted by a small cast of supporting players, the best of whom — somehow — is Peaches, who steps in to play the role of Kate Pierson on (brace yourself) “Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter,” a white-hot flash of a song that’s all punch and swagger.
Occasionally, the album seems to hint at denouement. Its title is hardly victorious, implying exhausted surrender rather than aggressive attack. Collapse is the last album in the group’s mega-million Warner Brothers contract, and that fact, coupled with their puzzling decision not to tour in support of a record that seems written to be played live, implies that Buck, Mills and Stipe have started to think of the group as a distraction rather than a going concern. Think, then, of Collapse as their elegant credit-montage, hitting all the familiar scenes along the way — oblong, counterintuitive rockers, vulnerable soul-searchers and, occasionally, ballads of arresting beauty.
Into that last category falls the tender lullaby “Every Day is Yours to Win,” which shows up halfway through the record and spins as slowly as a mobile over a baby’s crib. The gentleness of the lyrics is stirring, Stipe softly talking someone through life’s agonies by assuring: “I cannot tell a lie, it’s not all cherry pie/ but it’s all there waiting for you” before the song crests in a chorus of wordless beauty that can mean a hundred different things, depending on how you hear it. That, too, is a kind of reminiscence: R.E.M. are still at their best when they let you fill in the blanks.
Nice!
One of my favorite things is that you don’t do the “best since” thing. (Stupidest yet most common example, “Dylan’s best since ‘Blood on the Tracks.’”) You did a good job evaluating Collapse into Now in context, no more, no less. I know that that’s harder than it looks, and I appreciate it.
There’s a 4th group of fans though, or maybe it’s just me, between “lost their way” and the “happy to have them sticking around:” the ones of us who hear that voice, guitar and bass, and remember how it shook us down to the darkest blood, and pray that there’s at least one more great album in them. This ain’t that, but is so settled into itself that it’s easy to imagine being comfortable with this.
That was my biggest problem with Accelerate. It didn’t feel organic. It sounded like “Let’s make a loud one!” came first, instead of writing songs that demanded loudness, looking around and saying, well well well, we have us a rocker on our hands. Hey, maybe it was the latter, but it sounded to me like the former. It was kind of like a limerick that way – the form dictated the kind of content that was possible, and the shoe didn’t fit.
Maybe that’s what the title of this one means. Not Accelerate-ing, at least not for now. Now is now, and giving up that kind of fight turns out to be one of the graces of age. So for all that they’re cannibalizing themselves a little (listen for Swan Swan H on Oh My Heart too), there’s something to be said for being who you are at 50. Greatness is a young man’s game.
Although Dylan again, who remains my benchmark for aging gracefully: great stuff up to 40, wasn’t doing great albums at 50, but he sure as shit fired back up at 60 for some of his greatest, even if they couldn’t possibly change the world again. How could they? The world has already changed.
Likewise if REM has another great one in them, they’ve already done what they had to do, and don’t have to do it again, even if they could. Or more accurately, they did something for us that we didn’t exactly deserve, but understandably felt like we did.
The road ahead is still a long one, but you get where you’re going by starting where you are. This isn’t a great record. It’s a little more than pretty good though, and that’s more than enough to give me pleasure for now.
Teeny typo – it’s Hi-Tone Records, not Hib-Town.
i want to hear the radio segment, but i can’t at the office. is it available for replay later?
It will be, Daniel – I’ll post a link when I have it.
Tim: It is Hib-Tone. I don’t fuck around with my REM knowledge
And you should listen to the show when I post the link — or at least the end of it. Ethan Kaplan, who’s worked with REM for years, called in, and basically backed up what you said, saying that the last record was pretty calculated/specific, but that this one evolved organically.
I’m also betting this will be their final record.
ahhhhhhh.
this song is nice. it sounds like a return to their generic-but-good mid-career period, which — at this point — is a major achievement. you have to ignore the lyrics, tho.
bah. i can’t believe i’m even remotely considering downloading this tomorrow. i watched the promo clip for the disc; the songs seemed tuneless and grim at the time, but the two embedded on the blog lately seem better. bah.
*sigh*, i guess i’ll be downloading this disc tomorrow.
“Ethan Kaplan . . . (said) that the last record was pretty calculated/specific, but that this one evolved organically.”
i’m not sure if it’s more “organic,” but the quality difference between the last disc and this one is night-and-day. the problem with accellerate was less it’s calculated nature, and more its tuneless dirges. this one is lighter, with warm pop hooks and some grace.
Joe: Tim: It is Hib-Tone. I don’t fuck around with my REM knowledge
Kee-rist, I feel stupid. Maybe my favorite post to the dots in 7 years here, and I screw it up. I’m yoo-miliated that I’ve had the name of the label wrong since 1982 (I found the single after Chronic Town came out), even though this band has meant more to me than my children. My dyslexia trying to wave off some mental dissonance, I guess. Then again, it’s not like I get the names of my kids right either. My wife is cool with that and my kids never listen to me anyway, so life is good.
Hey, and another thing REM never gets credit for: Chronic Town came out TEN YEARS before The Chronic! Dang that imitator Dre, and Snoop, that Georgia murmurer.
I’m with D’esq on the tunelessness of Accelerate. Songs, boys, songs. As an exercise in compare/contrast, spin Monster and Accelerate back to back. Monster has songs and hooks galore. The parts that rock hard (say, Star 69) rock harder than anything on Accelerate, with the added bonus of a ballad as tough and twisted as “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream,” and songs in several other gears. And for an elegant example of self-cannibalization, check “You” – very definitely a Man Ray kind of sky.
In the face-off between the two rock records, Monster illustrates everything that was right with REM up until 96. Accelerate is an example of everything wrong since.
So Daniel, since you only mentioned the Collapse Into Now tracks embedded here, I assume that you hadn’t heard the stream at NPR? That really sealed the deal for me. Not not not a great record, but enough past good enough that, early Tuesday as I write this, I’m hitting the refresh button like a lab monkey on crack waiting for it to show.
I’m curious Joe, what makes you bet that this is their last record?
actually, i stayed up too late last night listening to the npr stream (we greybeards really need a full night’s sleep). i share your view: not a great record, but i like it in the way i liked some of their mid-career work. i think i’ll download it.
There is probably a segment of R.E.M. fans who have this tradition: waiting like a kid waits for Christmas day, to get the new album on release day.
Going back to 1984, in high school, I still remember each occasion of going to the record store to buy the latest on release day, and going home to listen to it over and over with my other R.E.M. fan-friends.
I’m 44 now, and although the “download thing” doesn’t quite have the same feel, it is still exciting to get the latest release today. I will listen to it at work, on the way home, and at home later, driving my kids crazy for a few weeks.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Michael Stipe once, and the thrill of meeting Peter Buck several times over the last three decades. I have had R.E.M. with me in horrible, low moments of my life, and during the most wonderful times of my life.
Yes, I am a huge fan, and I know there are more like me out there with the same feellings of excitement today.
Enjoy and savor the moment!