Bring Back the Soundtrack #3: The Accelerated Collapse of R.E.M.

Here, finally, is the much-anticipated R.E.M. issue, to give you a direct side-by-side comparison of their last two records as a band: Accelerate and Collapse Into Now.

Accelerate (2008), the band's first album in five years, feels like a futile effort to make people think they're still cool by throwing together a herky-jerky composition of material that jumps from the weirdest, most frantic instrumentation they've ever come up with to slow, indie-folk borefests that demand skipping unless your bedtime playlist is feeling threadbare.

Most of Accelerate lives up to its name with a relatively headbangable tempo, like the Smashing Pumpkins-inspired "Mr. Richards" and the sarcastically cheeky leadoff track, "Living Well Is the Best Revenge," and hits you with surprising lyrics like in the title track, which asks "where is the cartoon escape hatch for me?" and inspires you to "fall a new direction."

This record is definitely worth harvesting for its many nuggets of brilliance, but when lead singer Michael Stipe ends it all by professing to "DJ 'till the end of the world" (if your band is trying this hard to seem cool, being cool enough to consider yourself a DJ is out of the question), you may find yourself sitting in silence and wondering what you just listened to or why you paid for it.

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In contrast to the above (negative) example of why you should "work smarter, not harder," R.E.M.'s final album, Collapse Into Now is a complete, well-thought-out track set. Rather than jerking from one ostentatious proclamation of coolness or dull sample of mediocrity to another, Collapse flows in defiance of its portentous title through strange, arena-friendly epics like the album's opener, "Discoverer," well-placed generic transition pieces like the funky, mid-tempo "Uberlin," Accelerate-ish breakneck numbers like "All the Best," in which Stipe grabs our attention with his aggressive, percussive, beatnik delivery and (kudos!) absurd lyrics (see "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter" and the slightly annoying "Mine Smell Like Honey" for more of the same), and emotion-packed sleepers like the shuddery "Oh My Heart."
Not only is Collapse well-written and fluidly arranged; but every song has a feeling and a purpose that extends beyond a need to consume optical storage space. And thanks to a fadeout sample at the close of the album, we are reminded of the song with which we began, giving the listener a sense of Collapse Into Now as not just another track collection to be victimized by the modern, single-driven digital media market, but as a hearkening to the old days when making a complete work of art was of the utmost importance.
I'm sad that the band broke up, but if you're going to go out, an album of this caliber is the best way to Collapse. Hopefully Michael Stipe has a solo career in his future?
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Next time, I will head back to my Stay Tuned column for a look at some pre-Tuned selections from the world of reality TV before I give my opinions on the latest seasons of The X-Factor and The Voice.