REM Accelerates

I saw REM on Colbert last night promoting their new album Accelerate (I think that was the name). It was not the jangly McGuinn-Rickenbacker sound that Peter Buck (Tom Petty, The Plimsouls, and others) made a living off of. Although Peter was playing a fine-looking six-string Rick. McGuinn always favored the twelve-string, as I recall (and my recollection is mostly of the live shots of Tambourine Man for which he admitted stealing the beat from the Beach Boy's "Don't Worry Baby").

All that is beside the point, I was an REM fanatic in their 85-90 college radio greatness. I could probably still warble every note from Murmur, Reckoning, Fables, Pageant, Document, and Dead Letter Office (which was a compendium of B-sides and their first EP Chronic Town). They started really losing me on Green, and by Out of Time or Monster (can't remember the order), I was out of patience. I've mentioned on more than one occasion that I'm an "old shit" kind of guy, but in the case of REM, the 80s shit was way better than the 90s shit.

At long last, to the point. The new album rocks. No elaborate production. Short songs. No massive strings. Ripping guitar. See, I like to rock. And finally, it seems like REM might like to rock as well. Accelerate doesn't rock like, say, Pageant, which rocked all the way through with the exception of Swan, Swan and Flowers of Guatamala, but it definitely does rock. Cheers to them, the spirit of Bill Berry is back.

And as a bonus, I learned something. When I download from iTunes, I typically go for single songs. This is the first album I've downloaded in a long time. And what used to be my greatest complaint about iTunes and albums is now resolved. Now you get a PDF doc with all the album art and liner notes. Big step forward.

Now if I could just find an iMax theatre that had the new Scorcese-Stones movie without having to drive to Dallas.