Accelerate - REM (2008)

REM has been one of my favorite rock bands for more than 30 years. Their most influential and most successful records were in the rearview mirror by 2008. Drummer Bill Berry had retired from the band. The remaining 3 members had released two records already in the aughts that I admit I hadn’t paid a lot of attention.

Maybe that was the strategy: get back to their rock n roll roots to remind people they were still around. If so it worked great.

This is a rip-roaring 30 minutes, sounding slightly like their early classic records but with plenty of the songcraft they’d developed since then.

REM never got what I would think of as a “late career classic” but this and 2011’s Collapse Into Now (plus the fantastically complete Live At The Olympia) were a fitting victory lap for a band without peer.

Tracks I Liked

Living Well’s The Best Revenge - Fables of the Reconstruction of a rock band

Houston - Automatic For The People-era perfection

I’m Gonna DJ - look, part of why you love REM is that they’re goofy, and this is one of their goofiest in the best possible way