Review of REM's "Accelerate"

Hello folks,

Currently I have this job where I have a lot of downtime in which I can pretty much do whatever what I want. I do a lot of reading and listening to music and if my laptop wasn't 100 years old I could also bring that with me.

Last night I listened to the newest R.E.M. CD and I have to tell you its pretty good. Let me get my bias out of the way I am a humongous fan of R.E.M. I have loved them since the late 80s. It took me a few years to catch on to how good they were back in the day. Their last 3 or 4 CD's have been not very good. I thought their career as relevant music artists was over. However this CD is their best work in at least 10 years. I am reviewing the R.E.M. "Accelerate" CD available on iTunes. It is the extended CD with a total of 17 tracks.

First of all let me say this is considerably better than the recent NIN CD "The Slip". To show that they are back, R.E.M. starts off this CD with three straight rockers: "Living Well Is The Best Revenge", "Man Sized Wreath", and the first single, "Supernatural Serious". All three of these songs rawk! That is something that has been sorely missing from them for the last several years. "Man Sized Wreath" is a political rant of some kind, but I am not exactly sure against what. Is is against Bush? At the end Stipe ends the song singing the refrain, "Give me some". Some of what I am not sure of. Then the third song in this streak is "Supenatural Serious". I had never really listened to the lyrics before, the song sounds like it is about summer camp. Stipe repeats the line about "the humiliation about your teenage station." Then at the end of the song he is singing about the "celebration of your teenage station". I will have to get a therapist to explain that to me.

On their fourth song on this CD, R.E.M. sings "Hollow Man". They slow it down a bit but still rock during the chorus. Again this is another very cool song. "Hollow Man" actually found its way on to my iPod and only the best songs get on my iPod. The CD then moves on to "Houston". This is a short song, a sort of mellow rocker. It is seemingly about the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Government's lack of quick and proper response to it. The song starts off with the lyric, "If the storm doesn't kill me, the government will". Then Stipe sings, "I've got to get that out of my head". So while that part of the song is tragic, it is also a song of hope as the song talks about the coffee is good and he finally got a good night's sleep.

Part 2 of this review coming Sunday.