R.E.M. - "Collapse Into Now"
R.E.M. is back.
OK, I said the same thing after listening to their last album Accelerate. But their latest, Collapse Into Now, is so good it will relegate its very good predecessor’s place in the band’s history to being the album that merely stopped their creative slide, not the one that turned it all around.
The ringing drone that opens ‘Discoverer’, the first song on Collapse Into Now, serves notice we’re about to experience something fresh and unique and exhilarating from this band of fifty-somethings. It may grind down into a grungy Monster-esque riff once the old R.E.M. machine is up and running, but we still sense we’re about to experience something original in their canon.
Michael Stipes’ war-cry during the song’s chorus, and especially at its close, sounds both defiant and frustrated. And I get it. All this talk about a comeback, or their even having gone anywhere in the first place, seems ungrateful. I don’t understand how America’s best rock band continues to be neglected by the American public either. It’s a terrible indictment of the collective American taste, or lack thereof. I mean, come on folks: these guys have only slipped up once in thirty years! And this is their fifteenth album. I can’t think of another band over that period that has achieved such consistent quality for so long. U2 is their only peer, and the question of consistency with U2 depends on how you feel about some of their more questionable forays into experimentation like Pop and Zooropa. (I think R.E.M.’s experiments, Up and Reveal, are better executed and certainly aging better.) But even if you consider those good albums, U2 has only stepped up to the plate ten times in the same time period, eleven if you include the live album Rattle and Hum. It’s true that R.E.M. ceded the title “Best Band in the World” to the Irishmen back in the early 90’s, and with it their long-term commercial viability when they refused to tour during their artistic and commercial peak, but putting that aside - they could’ve never competed with Bono’s ambition and ego anyway) - no one has matched R.E.M.’s consistent flow of quality output in the last thirty years. Certainly no American band has. And yet Accelerate, their great ‘comeback’ album, didn’t even attain “gold album” status in America. Go figure. Meanwhile they played to full stadiums in Europe in support of that album. It’s reassuring knowing a least someone still appreciates them.
OK, I’ll descend from my soapbox. But not since 1998 have I been so excited about an R.E.M. release. Then they were coming off the New Adventures in Hi-Fi commercial letdown (what would signal the descent from their commercial peak) and had just lost their drummer Bill Berry, so a redefinition was expected and received in the form of Up, a criminally underappreciated sonic masterwork. Collapse Into Now is nothing like Up though. Nor is it exactly Accelerate either, though there will probably be comparisons due to the “back to the roots” vibe of both albums. But whereas Accelerate was a reactive punch-in-the-face to the lackluster Around the Sun, this new album is a more reflective take on the band’s history. There isn’t one other R.E.M. work that this album reminds me of, but there are tiny characteristics here and there that remind me of different reference points throughout the band’s catalog. But don’t think by this I mean that they’re falling back on old tricks, though Peter does pull out the mandolin for ‘Oh My Heart’ and ‘Me & Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando & I’ (a title only a writer could appreciate). Instead, this is a band consolidating the gains of thirty years hard work and mastery at their craft.
‘All the Best’ follows ‘Discoverer’ and it too is a pure rocker with a sort of Foo Fighters vibe: layers of electric guitars going off in different directions and tempos against a bashing, straight-forward beat. There are a handful of these energetic songs here: brash and invigorated with a renewed, youthful sense of purpose. ‘Mine Smell Like Honey’ sounds like what ‘Imitation of Life’ would have if they had put their hearts into it. ‘Alligator Aviator Autopilot Antimatter’ and ‘That Someone Is You’ made me despair only because I know I won’t hear them played live this summer. (The band has already announced they won’t be touring to support this album.) These songs are short and to the point. But they’re not as refined as the quick-attack of Accelerate, and as such attach themselves more tightly to the listener. (At forty-one minutes, Collapse Into Now is about six minutes longer than its predecessor.)
After the 1-2 punch of ‘Discoverer’ and ‘All the Best’ at its head, the album settles in with a string of slower songs, beginning with ‘Uberlin’, a song that, like R.E.M.’s best songs, masterfully balances light and dark. Indeed, this dynamic forms the heart of the album, and suggests a kinship with their melancholy masterpiece, Automatic for the People. ‘Oh My Heart’ features Peter’s propulsive acoustic strumming and seems to be a sequel to ‘Houston’. ‘It Happened Today’ sounds stock-R.E.M. at first thanks to Peter’s fall-back jangle punctuating every verse, but eventually builds into something inspiring, a la ‘Everybody Hurts’. After ‘Mine Smell Like Honey’ interrupts the meditative air, ‘Walk It Back’ is highlighted by Michael’s direct and touching vocals over jaunty piano. Throughout the album we’re reminded yet again that not only is the murmuring Michael of the 80’s long gone, but that he is the most expressive male vocalist in rock today. Indeed, Michael is a crooner: Sinatra without the Rat Pack bravado and toupee.
Though he can flash the bravado when he wants.
The album closes gorgeously with ‘Blue’. The song is part ‘Country Feedback’, part ‘Belong’. Like ‘Country Feedback’, an acoustic guitar supplies the rhythm under a heavily-distorted guitar. Like ‘Belong’, Michael’s opts to speak rather than sing, in an equally distorted voice that entices the listener to strain to understand his words. This time though, Michael’s wail on ‘Belong’ is replaced by Patti Smith’s softer lament, which also gives it a tinge of ‘E-Bow The Letter’. By fusing together classic characteristics, the band creates an even stronger new piece. But there’s more. Even as the tension builds, as Patti and Michael accelerate towards the song’s conclusion, we’re sitting back expecting the album to close on a nice poignant note. But there’s a surprise at the end abruptly shifting the mood from poignancy to euphoria. It’s a bit of pure genius, a touch that brings the album full-circle artistically while inspiring the listener to want to replay it over and over again. This is their best album since Automatic, proving that, yes, R.E.M. is back. They know it too; maybe that’s why they’re not touring. Though one has to listen close to what he’s saying in ‘Blue’, Michael’s last words are clear: “This is my time/and I am thrilled to be alive/Living/blessed/I understand/Twentieth century/ collapse into now.”
I think that says it all.
