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iBlaze...........
| Ew | | You had placed your trust in me,'' Michael Stipe sings on ''Hollow Man,'' a self-effacing interlude on R.E.M.'s otherwise loud and proud 14th album, Accelerate. ''I went upside down/I emptied out the room in 30 seconds flat...'' You'd almost think Stipe was apologizing for the room-clearing qualities of their last studio album, 2004's somnolent Around the Sun. Ever since drummer Bill Berry left the band in '97, R.E.M. had essentially ceased to rock on record, and fans drifted away during mellow albums both great (Up) and prosaic (Reveal). But it wasn't until the attenuated, keyboard-smothered Sun — where guitarist Peter Buck seemed to have gone on strike — that even hardcore defenders wondered if the group was begging to be put out of its misery....full text |
| | Avclub | | Fans have been hoping for a return to an earlier R.E.M. sound almost from the moment there was an "earlier R.E.M. sound." But even as the band's jangle and mumble was imitated across the college-rock scene of the '80s, R.E.M. kept looking forward. Jumping to a major label with 1988's Green, the band stayed odd but still made a play for higher commercial stakes. They made it work longer than most bands, turning in some uneven releases, but only starting to sound too tired and too slick to matter on 2004's Around The Sun....full text |
| | Spin | | R.E.M.'s last album, Around the Sun, stays on my shelf only for the sake of catalog completeness; it's been freed once or twice since 2004 to be dusted off and quickly reassessed: Did a band this important really release something so incomprehensibly dull and unrelentingly bored with itself? Well, they did. And Michael Stipe -- the one singing and wearing raccoon eye shadow lately -- even acknowledged the misstep, admitting that the group had lost focus, and that he, guitarist Peter Buck, and bassist Mike Mills "didn't talk… for a couple of records....full text |
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