Rem - Dreams at High Speed

"They'll be as original in ten years as they are now." No musical prophecy was ever more accurate than the one the "New York Times" dedicated to the debut of four young guys from Athens, Georgia, known until then only on the American college circuit. They had chosen an intriguing name, Rem, from "rapid eye movement", the rapid motion the eye makes during the sleep phase in which dreams form. It was 1983: hard times for the American rock industry; the charts were dominated above all by British imports ever since new wave had exploded between 1978 and '79. That Rem album, Murmur, arrived like a godsend. The famous music magazine "Rolling Stone" crowned it "album of the year", ahead of such huge sellers as Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and the Police's "Synchronicity". For Rem (pronounced R-E-M) the time had come to shed their garage-band image, to step down from the green '75 Dodge van in which they'd toured America without a dollar to their name. Success had arrived.

Rock in the Church

To understand the essence of Rem, you have to start with their roots, with that Athens – sixty thousand inhabitants, twenty thousand of them students – already home to the eccentric B-52's. A land steeped in the Southern literature of William Faulkner and a rich tradition of noir folk tales. "Georgia looks like a cultural desert: you drive through it and all you see is a row of McDonald's and shopping malls. But if you look two blocks back, you'll find the true nature of things," Michael Stipe, leader of the band that also includes Peter Buck (guitar), Bill Berry (drums) and Mike Mills (bass), once said. In Athens, Rem were the draw at parties that packed the old abandoned church on O'Connee Street right up to the bell tower. They played a wild, feverish brand of pop, in the style of the early Who, with the odd nod to the Byrds. But their muse was Patti Smith. "She knocked me out," Stipe recalls. "I had my dad's crappy old headphones, and I'd sit up all night eating cherries, spellbound, listening to her 'Horses'. How can she make this kind of music, it's incredible, I kept telling myself." Michael could never have imagined that one day the great high priestess of rock would sing alongside him on the stirring ballad "E-Bow The Letter" ('96).

Unlike so many other college bands, Rem weren't afraid of humiliation. Between '80 and '82 they toured America. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, they played a venue for "singles," filling in for a strip show: a brawl broke out. They also performed at the Wichita Falls military air base in Texas, where the marines' welcome was no warmer: "Oranges were flying onto the stage," guitarist Peter Buck recalls, "and people were passing us notes that said things like: 'If you play one more song like that, we'll beat you up!'" The band's first release, following the sprightly single "Radio Free Europe", was the EP Chronic Town (1982), which already featured some particularly sharp tracks, such as the energetic "1,000,000" (with more than a hint of punk), the psychedelic music-box feel of "Carnival Of Sorts" and the Eastern-tinged "Gardening At Night". The record, however, never broke out of the narrow confines of the indie circuit. But right from their full-length debut, with Murmur, Rem became the band of the moment in the United States, the only one able to make "underground" music while winning over a mass audience. It was with this very album that the concept of "alternative music" found a formidable vehicle for spreading across the United States, soon after beginning to influence mainstream production as well.

Produced by a studio fox like Mitch Easter, Murmur unleashes a dozen nearly perfect, timeless ballads. Peter Buck's folk-inflected arpeggiated guitars, Mike Mills' fulsome bass, Bill Berry's strong rhythmic counterpoint and country-flavored percussion, and the dazed, nasal chants sung by Michael Stipe all combine to create a blend of acoustic and electric textures, melody and energy, rural American rock, psychedelia and punk. Drawing on the purest sources of the American tradition, on vintage roots-rock and folk, R.E.M. regenerate those sounds, updating them for the age of post-punk and pre-grunge. Harmonic guitars and simple, graceful melodic lines sketch out "Radio Free Europe". Aching vocalizations, psychedelic moods and constant tempo changes mark "Pilgrimage", where the imprint of their masters is most strongly felt, especially in the way the melodies are worked out. But the record's real knockout blow is "Talk About The Passion", the song that will become something like the prototype of the "R.E.M. song": crystalline guitars, the immortal charm of jingle-jangle, Stipe's slurred yet incredibly "musical" singing, the drum breaks, the off-beat pulse, the simple, elegant melodies. Vocal harmonies again take center stage on the skittish "Moral Kiosk", while the slow "Perfect Circle" rests on understated, minimal harmonies. "Catapult", introduced by a powerful drumming, veers toward more pronounced country-rock tones, while "Sitting Still" dons a catchy, pop-leaning melody. The punk influence can be felt on a track like "9-9", propelled by an obsessive rhythm. Finally, the voices, paired with the folk sound of the guitar, return to the fore on the romantic "Shaking Through", with Stipe again in the spotlight. Murmur is the cornerstone of all of R.E.M.'s subsequent output and of so much indie rock to come.

Aspiring world leaders

Success continues with the following records, though often less consistent and more fragmentary. R.E.M. prove to be above all an extraordinary singles-churning machine, a band built around "singles" (or at least "songs") rather than albums. Still, the overall quality of their output remains very high for a band that positions itself right at the crossroads between alternative rock and the mainstream.

The second album, Reckoning (1984), leans mainly on the melancholy of the fine single "Pretty Persuasion" and on the dreamy spleen of the two other true-blue ballads, "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" and "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville", poised between country-soul and pop. The attempt to emphasize the recovery of the American tradition, of folk, of roots-rock, feels rather out of focus. And while the tracklist as a whole is less inspired than the debut album, Stipe's singing grows stronger, managing to deliver his chants in an even more fluid and multifaceted way, asserting a style utterly unique in the rock landscape of the period.

Produced in London by Joe Boyd, Fables Of The Reconstruction (1985) veers toward a darker, more reflective sound, losing sight somewhat of the shimmering melodicism (and rhythm) of the earlier works. The exceptions are the country nursery-rhyme of "Driver 8", the rustic ballad of "Grow The Rushes" and the biting "Auctioneer (Another Engine)", which raise the level slightly of a record too often steeped in self-satisfied mannerism (epitomized by the insipid "Can't Get There From Here"). Nor does the choice of fuller arrangements (with strings and sax) help the record succeed. R.E.M. seem to be at a turning point in their career: they could become one of the thousand indie bands that managed to nail one album and then got lost in the fog of the underground, or they could raise their heads and aim higher, trying to revitalize the magical sound of their debut and finally break through. The decision to emphasize social and political commitment in the lyrics, combined with a return to their more nostalgic, aching mood, proves to be a winning move right away. "Let's work together and construct a new state", they sing in the ecological anthem "Cuyahoga", where the red waters of the Appalachee become rivers of blood from the Native Americans massacred by white settlers, while the Ohio River is poisoned by industrial waste. It is the most moving track on Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), which marks a clear resurgence compared to the two previous works. On "Begin The Begin" Peter Buck's riff sits right on the line between softness and distortion, with country-rock flourishes barely kept on track, over which Michael Stipe's voice skips along, agile and full-bodied. The following "These Days" unleashes a heart-pounding gallop, with Mills finding room for a backing vocal worthy of epics and gunpowder. The single "Fall On Me" is a classic circular ballad drawing as much on 1950s song as on the languid psych-folk of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, gorgeous in its brief opening double arpeggio and exemplary in the growing linearity of the verse that meets a heartfelt chorus. "Hyena" lets itself be colored by strings, piano and backing vocals, giving in to an irredeemable sentimentality. The near-instrumental "Underneath The Bunker" oozes Latin madness, with accordion and tex-mex guitar. A persistent, understated arpeggio is the thread (barbed wire?) on which the ghostly melody of "The Flowers Of Guatemala" hangs. The country intro of "I Believe" sets up another ride on the emotional wave of Stipe's free-flowing lyrics and Buck's guitar, accompanied by an enchanted accordion. More hearts on the pavement with "What If We Give It Away?", yet another melodic marvel built on an ordinary midtempo. A tongue of feedback and we're thrown into the frenzy of "Just A Touch", piano in the style of Jerry "The Killer" Lee Lewis and guitar halfway between the Sonics and Aerosmith, a roller-coaster organ amid the fits of bass and drums, with Stipe throwing any pretense of restraint to the wind. The dirge of "Swan Swan H" is the album's dramatic peak, an outpouring of pent-up pain over the tense dialogue of two acoustic guitars, with yet another legendary breath of accordion introducing the acrid, distant flavor of tradition. It closes with the only track not credited to Berry-Buck-Mills-Stipe: it's "Superman", a joyous anthem with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Document (1987) marks the start of R.E.M.'s second great season. Now confident in the chemistry they'd achieved and in the maturity of their sound, the Athens boys finally manage to zero in on what they do best: songs, choruses, the hooks essential for capturing an audience and keeping it forever. Scott Litt's bright production injects a healthy dose of rock energy into their sound. And Stipe also crafts his first (supposed) love song, the aching "The One I Love" (in reality, after the first two lines - "This one goes out to the one I love/ One I've left behind" - the third line reads "a simple prop to occupy my time", sarcastically betraying any notion of sentiment). Stamped with an instantly knockout melodic progression and one of the most legendary choruses in their repertoire, it will be R.E.M.'s first single to crack the US Top Ten and will remain one of the great pop ballads of the decade. But there are many gems shining on this album. First and foremost, the apocalyptic "It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", with its jingle-jangle guitars and a rhythm worthy of Bo Diddley, over which Stipe rattles off his endless lyrics. And then there's the energetic "Finest Worksong" (with almost hard-rock guitar and martial drumming), which pokes fun at the contradictions of the yuppie era, or the jarring cover of "Strange" by Wire, the lopsided, almost funk-punk invective against McCarthyism of "Exhuming McCarthy", or the vintage folk-rock of "Disturbance At The Heron House". R.E.M.'s psychedelic moods come together above all in the aching "King Of Birds", while the end-of-the-world ballad "Fireplace" aims to draw attention back to the "fire that destroys and that purifies", the dominant theme of the whole album as described by Michael Stipe. Still ironic, sharp, polemical (the working title was supposedly "Last Train To Disneyland"), the album is another triumph and marks the end of the glorious run of I.R.S., the small label that had backed all of R.E.M.'s output up to that point and that will "let off steam" by releasing two compilations, Dead Letter Office (with rarities and covers) and the more substantial anthology Eponymous. But Stipe and co. are stars by now, and the majors are racing to sign them.

Rock'n'roll star

In the end Warner wins out, with a staggering contract: ten million dollars. The former squatters of O'Connee Street lay down a few strict conditions (control over the product, the right to turn down interviews, TV appearances, concerts, etc.), but they risk being crushed by the rock industry machine. At least at first, that won't happen. The first album of the Warner era is Green (1988), "green" as in "the color of environmentalists, but also of dollars". The message is a kind of moral rearmament in the face of the cynicism of those years. The irony is subtle on the gorgeous, driving "World Leader Pretend". And the frantic "Orange Crush" is about chemical warfare (from "Agent Orange", the squadrons that dropped napalm on civilians in Vietnam). The catchy chorus of "Pop Song 89" (echoing more than a little of the Doors' "Hello, I Love You") is the icebreaker for the charts. "Stand" is the jolt of energy that sneaks into the warm glow of the acoustic ballads (the rustic elegy for banjo and accordion of "You Are The Everything", the other heartfelt bucolic sketch of "Hairshirt" and the sober dirge of "Wrong Child", sung by two out-of-sync voices). The closing stretch, on the other hand, is steeped entirely in nostalgia, with the evocative "I Remember California", suspended between a melodic bassline and the finely psychedelic, disorienting guitar arpeggios.

The album is followed by a long tour that establishes R.E.M. as one of the leading bands of the moment. And commercial returns start to become substantial: Green will sell more than double what Document did.

The international breakthrough

From supporting an oppressed Tibet to the fight against AIDS, from environmental campaigns to Democratic Party fundraising, R.E.M. meanwhile never miss a chance to get political. "In the US we're labeled a radical band," they say, "but really we'd be moderates - it's just that in the age of Reagan and Bush there was no choice but to be radical." In the middle of the Gulf War, the album of worldwide triumph explodes onto the scene, Out Of Time (1991), more than fifteen million copies sold, number 1 on the US charts, and an apocalyptic opening line: "The world is collapsing around my ears." A line that sounds like a condemnation. "Hundreds of thousands of Americans protested against that war, but no one talked about it," Stipe recalls. Much of the album's success is owed to a breathtaking opening salvo. After a very sixties guitar intro, "Radio Song" takes shape over sturdy funky rhythms, with an organ and a string section building a powerful sonic framework, and Stipe trading verses with Kris Needs, aka KRS-1, rapper of Boogie Down Productions. But that's nothing compared to the next track: propelled by a wave of strings (synthetic ones, in this case) and a driving rhythm, "Losing My Religion" soars into an enveloping melody, which Stipe delivers with a pessimistic, desolate air. It is "the" R.E.M. song by definition, the link between their "alternative" origins and their destiny as rock stars, the anthem that (like it or not) will represent them forever.

The following "Low" also helps keep the pathos running high, with an organ drone, a bass clarinet and a bleak string section accompanying Stipe's mournful vocalizations. Then, like a sudden jolt, comes the radiant "Near Wild Heaven", with festive backing vocals and a catchy, Beach Boys-style chorus. A climate of euphoria is reaffirmed by the two other fine little songs that follow, the more overblown "Endgame" and the even more loopy waltz of "Shiny Happy People", with Michael Stipe dueting with Kate Pierson of the B-52's (and an even more nonsensical video, which will only boost its success).

The second half of the record is especially enriched by "Texarkana", with a memorable chorus for a road ballad with desert-like, aching tones, sung with great pathos by Mike Mills; but the scratchy guitar work of "Country Feedback" also shines, with another showcase of Stipe's vocal skill.

Almost stunned by their own success, Stipe and co. take refuge in the shadows of Automatic For The People (1992), the darkest, most funereal album of their career. Dominated by anxiety about living and the fear of death, the record stays throughout on subdued, almost chamber-like sonorities, replacing the liveliness of previous works with more majestic, oppressive orchestral arrangements, often bearing the signature of John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. The masterpiece is "Drive", a stark, moving litany that Stipe delivers with a fatalistic air, accompanied by one of Buck's most magical arpeggios, before the electric guitar and a melodramatic string section take over. "Drive" is almost the archetype of this new R.E.M. sound, predominantly acoustic, almost never uptempo. Stipe unveils a series of aching ballads, from the desolate soul of "Everybody Hurts" to the piano sonata of "Nightswimming" all the way to the aching "Find The River", almost a country serenade in the style of Fred Neil. Death - as noted - looms from beginning to end: the folky "Try Not To Breathe" is inspired by Jack Kevorkian, nicknamed "Dr. Death" for his pro-euthanasia crusade; the funereal "Sweetness Follows" tells of a son having to bury his parents; while "Man On The Moon" and "Monty Got A Raw Deal" are tributes to two late actors, namely Andy Kaufman (the brilliant, ill-fated comedian later portrayed on the big screen by Jim Carrey) and Montgomery Clift, who also died prematurely (and was already honored by the Clash on the album "London Calling"). The only flash of cheer amid so much darkness is the playful "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite", which riffs on the evergreen "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

Almost physically embodied by Stipe himself, who during this period always appears thin, pale and emaciated, Automatic For The People reflects the existential crisis of R.E.M.'s frontman, torn between a taste for stardom and the need to preserve his own identity, made all the more urgent by his proverbial shyness. "I've always been paralyzed by my own insecurity," he would later say. "But I had to learn to communicate. You've got to enjoy being a star, otherwise you risk ruining yourself." And Stipe played along when he declared: "I'm sexually ambiguous, but don't call me bisexual." A remark that also helped fuel the legend that he was HIV-positive. "I couldn't be better - if I never publicly denied it, it's because I didn't want to hurt the feelings of AIDS sufferers," he would clarify in '94. R.E.M.'s success, in any case, rests largely on the suggestive power of his unmistakable singing. "My method," he explains, "consists of endlessly repeating, the way children do, certain very 'sonorous' phrases picked up from people, or drawing on motifs from the collective unconscious." And then there are the lyrics, often cryptic, built in flashes, full of characters and wordplay. "I'm tired of writing songs full of content that nobody then understands," he would snap one day in a fit of arrogance.

When Monster came out in 1994, it was a real shock. R.E.M. suddenly roused themselves from the depressed languor of the previous record, unleashing one of the hardest, most forceful performances of their career. The more cynical observers put two and two together, linking the shift to the concurrent grunge boom of grunge acts like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden (and indeed it was right around this time that contact between Stipe and Kurt Cobain intensified; the Nirvana frontman would take his own life during the album's recording sessions). Others simply credited R.E.M. with the courage to turn the page once again. Either way, Monster still has the power to move you with the rage and energy it unleashes. The single "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" delivers an instantly catchy chorus and a riff that takes your breath away. It's none other than Sonic Youth, high priests of noise, who inspired the rough-edged "Crush With Eyeliner" (with Thurston Moore himself trading blows with Buck), while "I Took Your Name" and "Star 69" seem to reawaken the feral, lascivious rock of the Stooges. The reggae-rock of The Police leaves its unmistakable mark on the catchy "Bang And Blame", made distinctive by an eccentric falsetto vocal in the style of Marvin Gaye. Berry's drumming, martial and obsessive, sends "I Don't Sleep, I Dream" galloping forward, its chorus scarred by Stipe singing in an even higher, almost effeminate register. There's also a para-grunge track in "King Of Comedy" and more or less explicit nods to the "lysergic" Velvet Underground on "Let Me In" (a ballad wrapped in clouds of feedback and swirls of organ) and in the psychedelic raga of "You", with tapes run backwards and wild drums acting as counterpoint to Stipe's eerie, droning vocal. But don't mistake this energy for optimism: a sense of death still hangs over the record (it's dedicated to River Phoenix, the young Hollywood star killed by an overdose on Halloween night 1993), even if transfigured into screams and fury.

Rather than attempting another change of direction, the follow-up, New Adventures In Hi-Fi (1996), set out to sum up every facet of the R.E.M. sound, ending up as a kind of anthology of four decades of American popular music. Its fourteen tracks draw on the most disparate genres, from roots-rock to folk, from country to blues, from rock'n'roll to hard rock. But what might have seemed like a reckless gamble — holding together such a babel of heterogeneous sounds — turns out instead to be an inspired move. Two events, however, cast a shadow over the album's gestation: the departure of Jefferson Holt, the band's longtime manager since their earliest days, and the near-tragedy in Lausanne during the "Monster Tour", when drummer Bill Berry came close to dying from a brain aneurysm. Stipe's pessimistic mood leaves its shadow on this album too, pervaded as it is by a bitter disillusionment with the deceptions of the American Dream. The manifesto of this disenchantment is the opening "How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us", with its lovely keyboard intro (courtesy of Mills) and near hip-hop cadences. Melody remains the band's trademark, and the album offers at least three unforgettable examples: the one sung by Stipe in duet with Patti Smith on the sprawling ballad "E-Bow The Letter"; the one arranged for piano and violin (courtesy of guest Andy Carlson) on the poignant "Electrolite"; and the one that floods "Be Mine" with sweetness. The pseudo-grunge legacy of Monster remains evident on several tracks ("Bittersweet Me", "Wake Up Bomb", "So Fast So Numb"); "Undertow" renews the band's taste for noisier rock; "The Wake-Up Bomb" is another nod to the glam of T. Rex and Mott The Hoople; but just as strong is the pull of folk-rock-inflected acoustic sounds, starting with the single "Leave" and the intense ballad "New Test Leper". Overall, despite a few too many lulls and moments of indecision, New Adventures In Hi-Fi can safely be considered R.E.M.'s most underrated record, since critics — snobbish to varying degrees — and the public alike failed to give it the reception it deserved.

Starting Over From Three

In the meantime, the Athens band had signed a huge new deal with Warner: 80 million dollars to produce around ten albums on a two-year cycle, as if they were a tile factory rather than a rock band. But it's precisely at this point that the fairy tale of the Georgia boys perhaps cracks for good. Tired of the rockstar life and shaken by the accident in Lausanne, Berry retires. "When he left us," recalls Stipe, the band's singer and leader, "we felt finished. But only for three minutes. Then the urge to carry on took over." Stipe, Buck and Mills therefore decide to press on regardless. "A three-legged dog is still a dog," Stipe would add. The trouble is, the "three-legged dog" would no longer be able to bite, stringing together three disheartening albums in Up, Reveal and Around The Sun, interspersed in 1999 with the soundtrack to Man On The Moon, Milos Forman's film about the life of Andy Kaufman. With the soul of the R.E.M. sound smothered under layers of electronics and studio trickery, Up (1998) only manages to offer the honest ballad "Daysleeper", the passionate country-folk revival of "Diminished" and the quirky para-hard-rock of "Lotus", plus a handful of confused and embarrassing tracks in which there's no longer even a trace of the great talent the Athens band had poured into their previous records (from the near synth-pop in the style of OMD on the opening "Airportman" to yet another Beach Boys homage in "At My Most Beautiful" and "Parakeet", right down to that sort of parody of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" that is "Hope").

The follow-up, Reveal (2001), fares no better — a visionary, melodic album meant as the American band's tribute both to Sixties sounds and to the wide-open spaces of America. "All twelve songs are set in vast, wild open spaces," they explained, "and carry within them the feeling of air, of breath, of flying at high altitude." The band (with Joey Waronker on drums) only occasionally recaptures the fresh spirit of their early days ("The Lifting"), and the ballads — Stipe and co.'s true specialty — have taken over: soft guitars chasing one another, delicate electronic textures woven by the keyboards, horns and strings whispering of romance and sentiment. The single "Imitation of Life", though, is a spectacular flop. If anything, three "classic"-sounding tracks are worth saving — "I'll Take The Rain", "I've Been High" and above all the airy "All The Way To Reno (You're Gonna Be A Star)" — though they don't add much of significance to the band's usual melodic arsenal. Though slightly better than Up, the album still seems to bear heavy traces of the serious creative drought weighing on the band since Berry's departure.

Around The Sun (2004) marks another stage in the group's relentless decline. The single "Leaving New York" is a classic R.E.M. ballad, with the usual enchanted guitar arpeggios, Stipe's modulated sing-song delivery and a catchy chorus, but it adds nothing to its predecessors (from "Everybody Hurts" to "Daysleeper"). It's precisely on the "melancholy" side, though, that Stipe and company still manage to stay afloat, managing, if only in flashes, to capture that lump-in-the-throat feeling weighing on post-9/11 America, with tracks like "Worst Joke Ever" (a dark, aching slow number, embellished with soft acoustic flourishes and delivered by Stipe in an unusually heart-wrenching register) or "Final Straw", where his litany is accompanied only by a sinister little western guitar. Other times, the album drowns in banality: "Make It All Ok", with its predictable guitar-and-voice intro and equally predictable crescendo of vocal harmonies and drums, or "The Boy In The Well" with its classic mid-tempo pulse punctuated by keyboards, guitars, piano and accordion, or again "I Wanted To Be Wrong", with its lovely opening arpeggio driven on by the interplay of electric guitar, bass and drums. If there's one new element to be found on "Around The Sun", it might be the choice to scale back the role of electric guitars, putting the spotlight instead on Stipe's vocals and on the gradual addition of strings, piano, Hammond organ and keyboards. The result, however, disappoints on every front: from the late-period U2-style synth-pop of "Electron Blue" to the muddled mess of keyboards, piano and assorted jingle-jangle on "Aftermath", right down to the leaden atmospheres of "High Speed Train". "Wander Lust" even tries to exhume the old "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" by grafting onto it a driving rhythm reminiscent of the Clash's "London Calling". But the record's most glaring missteps are the unspeakable rap tacked onto the end of "The Outsiders", courtesy of Q-Tip, and Stipe's obsessive "yeah-yeah", a sort of addled version of McCartney's "She Loves You" that pollutes "The Ascent Of Man". The record would be talked about mostly for its anti-Bush themes.

Accelerate (2008) is a full-throttle return to form. The album lasts just 35 minutes and is made up of the fastest, most impactful songs Stipe and co. had written in at least a decade, all played and performed with a sense of joyful nonchalance.

The opening notes of "Living Well Is The Best Revenge" recall that fabulous gallop of "These Days" (from Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986). But it's not just about speed: the obligatory ballad ("Until The Day Is Done") is particularly inspired, the single chosen to lead the album ("Supernatural Superserious") ranks among the band's best and most immediate in years, thanks in no small part to Mike Mills' glorious harmonies. And then there's the masterstroke of "Hollow Man", a shimmering mid-tempo number where, accompanying Stipe's unmistakable voice, the acoustic instruments blend perfectly with Peter Buck's feedback.

Not everything, however, is perfectly realized in this joyful war machine: "Houston", which could have been a small gem of gentle acoustic folk, is a missed opportunity and, marred by omnipresent electric distortion, ends up normalized and sacrificed on the altar of cohesion. "Mr. Richard" never quite takes off. Even the closing "I'm Gonna DJ", however well it might work on FM radio, remains a genetically modified R.E.M. song that raises a few eyebrows.

Some of the poetry and mystery of past times is, inevitably, lost, but that, unfortunately, is nothing new. So, while not quite a definitive return to the form of the good old days, Stipe and company's new work at least proves that fresh blood still flows through the tired, somewhat worn-out heart of a band now active for a quarter century, and that the time has not yet come to put a final word on an experience that, unforgettable in places, has marked the history of rock over the last three decades.

Collapse Into Now arrives three years after its predecessor and announces itself right away in direct fashion, with the opening one-two of "Discoverer" and "All The Best" delivering an energetic, lean punch — short on frills but also short on real invention: it offers a sound that could be a direct descendant of Monster or New Adventures In Hi-Fi and seems to herald a second straight rock'n'roll album, albeit a less carefree one. The pace, however, slows down abruptly, and Collapse Into Now proves to be decidedly more meditative than its predecessor, with the single "Überlin" standing out for its melodic grace steeped in spleen, its acoustic delicacy bolstered by the soft electronics typical of their recent output.

The sparkling, playful one-two of "Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter" (the Stipe-Peaches vocal blend is surprisingly good and fresh, even if longtime fans will no doubt turn up their noses) and the very short "To Someone Is You" (which again harks back to the faster tracks of their early career) picks the pace back up, but the result feels even more youthful than what was offered on Accelerate. It's almost as if the band members, now past fifty, viewed electric guitars as a kind of musical Viagra, indispensable if they're still to be considered rockstars.

The ending is devoted, a bit predictably (and short-sightedly), to two ballads that close the album by once again dialing down the energy and further unbalancing the tracklist. First comes the languid (and soporific) "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando And I", which, despite promising beginnings, never really takes flight, and finally what on paper should have been one of the whole record's highlights: the second collaboration with muse Patti Smith. Unfortunately, in this case, the high priestess of rock adds little pathos and no thrills to "Blue", a ballad modeled almost embarrassingly on their first collaboration, "E-Bow The Letter": a flood of e-bow, Stipe's distorted spoken-word delivery, and the sense of déjà vu is rather pronounced.

The impression is that Collapse Into Now could be a sort of greatest-hits of R.E.M.'s signature atmospheres, from their early days right up to "Around The Sun", by way of Out Of Time. But although the atmospheres are the familiar ones, what's missing here are truly memorable melodies to support such a risky undertaking. And if the overall result seems to grow on repeated listens, that's mainly down to a kind of acclimatization effect from the game of cross-references, which makes the new tracks, however "bland", instantly familiar ("Mine Smells Like Honey", for instance, might strike fans of albums like "Life's Rich Pageant" as the most successful of the bunch).

Collapse Into Now thus ends up being a rather forgettable album in R.E.M.'s long recording career, one dotted with works of absolute value and extraordinary commercial success, and it suggests, without taking anything away from the great craft and class on display even on these tracks, that for the three men from Athens, rock music has by now become little more than a job, carried out with diligence, skill and application, but without any real passion left. Such a realization can only disappoint even the most hardcore fan, though it won't entirely satisfy the most forgiving and indulgent follower either.

It seems the point of no return in R.E.M.'s arc came during what will be remembered as the last tour of their history, in the summer of 2008. The three surviving members of one of the most significant bands in rock history — the band that, more than any other, kept a certain way of making and thinking about rock music afloat when, some thirty years earlier, it had seemed destined to end up in the meat grinder of synths and glitter — had fallen and gotten back up, and looking each other in the eye, they realized there probably wasn't much more to say.

And so Stipe, Mills and Buck found themselves looking at one another, and they all more or less thought the same thing: let's make this one last record for Warner, and then bring down the curtain. And so, a handful of months after Collapse Into Now — that small compendium of the many masks they'd worn throughout their long career, a worthy final chapter not without a few undeniable flashes of brilliance — came the announcement: R.E.M. was no longer a band.

Then, to take their leave, they put together their definitive greatest hits, with a fantastic title, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage, adding three unreleased tracks to thirty-seven songs pulled from the more than two hundred they'd released from 1982 to that point.

Naturally, it's not the three unreleased tracks that give meaning to this collection, although the one chosen as the lead single, "We All Go Back To Where We Belong," with its horns that seem to have been placed there on a whim by Burt Bacharach and its melancholy air, all in all cuts a fine figure as a farewell song — elegant, nostalgic and understated. "A Month Of Saturdays," which precedes it in the running order, was born, according to Mills, as a kind of tribute to Pylon, while "Hallelujah," which closes things out, is a lovely, very R.E.M.-esque ballad, with a bass line that circles around itself, a few strings, and a chorus built entirely on the wordless ups and downs of Stipe's voice.

With the R.E.M. era over, the four Athens natives — still bound by a brotherly friendship — found themselves on different artistic paths. Bill Berry has continued the life away from the spotlight he embarked on after leaving in 1997, tending to his farm. On rare occasions, for major events like their induction into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, he joins his bandmates on stage.

Peter Buck's activity, by contrast, has been unstoppable, in all sorts of forms and collaborations. To name just a few of the latest, besides working as a producer, there are three solo albums (the self-titled debut from 2012, I Am Back to Blow Your Mind Once Again the year after, and Warzone Earth in 2015, all packed with notable guests), collaborations (the Arthur Buck project with songwriter Joseph Arthur, whose beautiful "In The Sun" R.E.M. covered; or Beat Poetry for Survivalists with Luke Haines), and his presence in the supergroup Filthy Friends.

Mike Mills has paid tribute to his beloved Big Star, and later composed and performed, with violinist Robert McDuffie, a Concerto for Violin, Rock Band, and String Orchestra. Together with Stipe, he has handled the band's legacy, presenting to the press and media the post-breakup releases: Complete Rarities: I.R.S. 1982-1987 (2014), Complete Rarities: Warner Bros. 1988-2011 (2014), Unplugged 1991-2001: The Complete Sessions (2014), R.E.M. at the BBC (2018) and Live At The Borderline (2019), which documents the Out Of Time tour under the pseudonym Bingo Hand Job.

You can instead see the quartet reunited in full in the third episode of the first season of the Netflix series "Song Exploder." Which song's genesis do they discuss? The answer is too easy…

On the artistic front, Michael Stipe has remained very active, especially with his photography books, including the recent "Our Interference Times: A Visual Record," put together with Douglas Coupland. On the musical side, he produced the latest Fischerspooner album, and duetted with his friend Rain Phoenix on "Time Is the Killer" (Time Gone, 2019): River Phoenix's sister had appeared in the video for "At My Most Beautiful." Of the much-discussed solo debut, still nothing concrete, apart from a few scattered clues. The singer has released singles that are quite far removed from the R.E.M. song format: "Future, If Future," "Your Capricious Soul" and "Drive to the Ocean." Worth noting, finally, is the splendid collaboration with Big Red Machine called "No Time For Love Like Now," released during the 2020 lockdown and covered shortly after in Italy by Zucchero.

Meanwhile the band, assisted by longtime manager Bertis Downs, ended its contract with Warner and went back to being an indie act, signing with Craft Recordings to reissue its catalogue.

The 2021 reissue offers the "25th Anniversary Edition" of New Adventures in Hi-Fi, an album born from the belly of the Monster. In 1995, just months after releasing Monster, R.E.M. kicked off the accompanying world tour. Rather than resting on the huge success and acclaim of the early '90s, they fed their unbridled creativity by recording new songs on a multi-track recorder between soundchecks, dressing rooms and bus rides. Hence the title, which winks at the recording methods used. Only four tracks were finished or completed at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle ("New Test Leper," "How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us," "E-Bow The Letter," "Be Mine"). Everything else we hear was born entirely "on the road": the liner notes specify, in brackets, where each song came to life. A perfect example is "Zither," recorded in the "Dressing Room Philadelphia." Compared to its predecessor, New Adventures in Hi-Fi shows off a broader rock palette. On the 1994 album dedicated to River Phoenix, the distorted, thunderous guitars overwhelmed Stipe's voice; this time around, the singer places his performance above everything else. And you can hear it. R.E.M. wanted to confirm themselves as the most important "anti-rock band" in the world: creativity and freedom before any commercial formula (and it takes courage to follow that path right after renewing a multimillion-dollar contract with Warner). The album was previewed by the duet with Patti Smith on "E-bow The Letter," an epistolary "vomit song" with zero regard for radio logic, in which Stipe sings "This fame thing, I don't get it" and "It can take you far, this star thing, I don't get it," once again abdicating the role of rock star and showing just how much R.E.M. wanted to be something else. The other singles chosen leaned toward the melodic side: "Bittersweet Me" (with Valeria Golino starring in the video), the beloved "Electrolite," and the opener "How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us." "Be Mine" wasn't picked as a single: producer Scott Litt, upon first hearing the song, suggested a few small tweaks that would have made it a massive hit. Naturally, the four of them chose the opposite path. On the "Anniversary Edition," you can hear it in the "Mike On Bus" version, with rawer guitars and no drums. As for the other tracks born on the road, "Leave" and "New Test Leper" still shine today. The former is a unique composition within their catalogue, with the siren-like Arp Odyssey synth played non-stop for all seven minutes by Scott McCaughey (who from then on became a fixture in the studio as well), Buck's soaring guitar, and Stipe at his most commanding. The latter, also included here in a "Live Acoustic" version, tells with fragile beauty the crisis of a "talk show host," one of the very few lyrics written in the first person as a narrative by the singer. Pause your reading for a moment and go find McCaughey's account of the song's genesis in David Buckley's book "R.E.M. Fiction." The rest of the hefty, by-now-anthological tracklist offers up the band's full guitar range, moving from the fun nonsense of "Binky The Doormat" to the "death by water" of "Undertow," enriched by one of Mike Mills's many knockout backing vocals, which prop up so many passages throughout. As for New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the bassist made his view quite clear in an interview with Mojo, placing it on the podium right behind Murmur and Automatic For The People. But let's see what the "25th Anniversary Edition" actually offers. In the Deluxe Edition, besides Disc 1 with the remastered album and Disc 2, "B-sides and Rarities," there's a Blu-Ray whose contents include a previously unreleased film, the Hi-Res/5.1 Surround Sound mix, and HD videos for all five singles. The artwork, built around Stipe's black-and-white photographs, has been expanded with postcards, a poster, and above all a book featuring new photographic material and contributions — alongside the four band members themselves — from the aforementioned Patti Smith, friend, fan and fellow musician Thom Yorke (who would later duet live with R.E.M. performing "E-Bow The Letter," and whose Radiohead opened a number of dates on the Monster Tour around that time), and Scott Litt, who with this very album closed out a collaboration that began with "Document." This "Anniversary Edition" doesn't include a disc of remixes of every track, as the "Monster" reissue did two years earlier. Given how those turned out, it's no great loss: we'll just keep "Let Me In," built around a guitar part by Kurt Cobain played by Mike Mills, and a chill-inducing vocal performance from Stipe. The other rarities and B-sides aren't new, having already appeared twenty-five years ago as B-sides of the singles and later collected on Complete Rarities: Warner Bros. 1988-2011. "Leave" (Alternate Version) — released on the soundtrack to "A Life Less Ordinary" and included on the bonus edition of In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 — could easily have slotted into Up. On the covers front, we have "Sponge," by their never-sufficiently-mourned friend and colleague Vic Chesnutt, Richard Thompson's "Wall Of Death," Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman," and "Love Is All Around," sung and later captured on Unplugged 1991-2001 – The Complete Sessions. As for the live versions of the songs, worth noting is a "Departure" captured during the soundcheck of the 1995 Rome show. Positioned at the heart of an unrepeatable decade for R.E.M. and for rock history, New Adventures in Hi-Fi closes with Stipe singing lines that sound even more powerful these days:

I'm not scared

I'm outta here

The early months of 2023 brought a welcome surprise: Bill Berry's return to the scene on the debut album by The Bad Ends. Away from the spotlight, the drummer had only appeared on special occasions, such as the band's induction into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, or that night in 2020 when we came within a hair's breadth of an official reunion, had Vanessa from Pylon not sung "Crazy" in Stipe's place. It took Mike Mantione of Five Eight — a cult band also formed in Athens, GA, in 1992, and a touring partner of Stipe & co. — to bring Berry back into the fold. According to their own accounts, it all came together quite spontaneously. Mantione was working on a solo project backed by his trusted musicians, and after meeting Berry, sent him a song written for The Power And The Glory: specifically "Little Black Cloud." And that was that. Berry's presence brings echoes of R.E.M., while also introducing us to his less famous but very capable bandmates. The Bad Ends' debut indeed has its own distinct character, falling in line with a strain of indie pop-rock that bands from that area know how to do properly (see The Minus 5, just to name one "close" reference). If The Power And The Glory turns out to be the start of a new journey, given how well this first step has gone, we can only be glad about it.

Meanwhile, Craft continues its year-by-year reissue campaign of the R.E.M. catalogue. After the debut EP Chronic Town, reissued in 2022, the following year it was the turn of Up - 25th Anniversary Edition: the perfect record to close out the '90s. The last decade with rock — and MTV, record labels and all that came with them — as the protagonist. The last decade to have R.E.M. — and not only them — as protagonists. Over the years, "Up" — beyond that remarkable tour that also brought them to Italy in 1999, with Afterhours opening in Bologna — has rarely been showcased much, whether in live shows or best-ofs: perhaps for the band it wasn't an easy memory to reckon with. Fans, however, are a different story, and twenty-five years on they're still here, loving it, ready to appreciate the remastered version, a generous booklet, and a disc featuring the live set performed for their appearance on the show "Party Of Five."

Released only via streaming, We Are Hope Despite The Times (2024) collects some of their most politically engaged songs (spanning 1986-1989, but also "Ignoreland", ed.), chosen to raise awareness among American voters ahead of the 2024 Presidential election.

Contributions by Alessio Belli, Nello Giovane – IAMR ("Lifes Rich Pageant"), Francesco Amoroso ("Accelerate", "Collapse Into Now"), Stefano Fiori ("Collapse Into Now"), Giovanni Dozzini ("Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage")

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