Albums Of The Year No. 12

And here we have:

12. R.E.M.- Accelerate


After their last album, (the not particularly very good 'Around The Sun'), most wrote off R.E.M. It seems like they were only throwing everyone off before unleashing this album, which is definately the best album they've released since becoming a 3 piece.

The first 3 tracks alone make this album worth it. The opening salvo of 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge', 'Man-Sized Wreath' and 'Supernatural Superserious' is stunning and just blows the listener away. All of those songs are essentially 'rock' but have a weird jangly feeling to them, much like R.E.M.'s 80's material. 'Living Well Is The Best Revenge' in particular is ace, you can just imagine the band jumping around whilst recording the song and Michael Stipe swinging around his mike stand. The rhyming of 'apostles' and 'nostrils' in the chorus is nothing short of genius either.

'Hollow Man' is a lovely slow song to take a breather after the fast pace of the first 3 tracks. The band show of some of their, still existant, experimental side with 'Houston', an odd song with stabs of keyboard over a country-esque acoustic guitar. Acoustics feature again on the beautiful 'Until The Day Is Done', a song which wouldn't have been out of place on 'Automatic For The People'. 'Mr Richards' and 'Sing For The Submarine' are two other mid paced songs but more electricfied. 'Mr Richards' features some epic chord changes thanks to Peter Buck (his guitar work is superb throughout the album), whilst 'Sing For The Submarine' has a darker edge to it along with some unusually heavy bass from Mike Mills.

The fast paced songs are the albums biggest strength though. The album closes with the two fastest songs on the album, the dazzling 'Horse To Water', Michael Stipe spitting out words at an unbelieveable speed and more epic chord changes from Mr. Buck, and the odd yet superb closer of 'I'm Gonna DJ', that features the fantastic refrain of, 'Music is the light you cannot resist'.

The songs are all ridiculously catchy and you can't help but jump around the room to them. All are superb musically too and show off some of Michael Stipes most inventive word play ever. you have to hand it to R.E.M., it looked like the end was nigh but managed to bounce back with a bloody superb album. Fair play to them.