Think I agree with this. The energy of the first three tracks is great but overall still very much feels one of their lesser albums
I’m just pleased we now have a back up in case Colin Zeal(Uk) is ill…
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I look forward to the day when we have a collection of colinzeals from across the globe all joining in on R.E.M. chat.
Edit: in my head now im trying to say Colinzeal in a way that sounds like “Colin’s ill”
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Back on topic: Accelerate is actually a solid album with the best songs being very good.
Obviously as someone else has stated above though it doesn’t have the wit or magic of their earlier works and doesn’t really change pace or sound much throughout but it does what it does well.
Reckon if this album had been by a new band rather than R.E.M. then all the usual outlets would have been creaming themselves and pushing this band and album hard.
We did discuss Up a few weeks back as we’ve been working through chronologically.
I think you’d be a lone voice rating it as their best. I’m a bigger fan of it than most on here and even I’d struggle to rank it much above mid table.
Ok, I enjoyed re-visiting Accelerate over the last week. It’s a record I didn’t play much after buying for a long time as it had the WB copy protection on and I couldn’t burn it to my ipod.
I think it’s the sound of a band who know they’re nearing their end deciding to have some fun before they do. I suspect they always knew it would be more of a footnote album than anything else but it’s nice to hear some Buck riffs, melodic basslines and Mills harmonies again.
On the pluses, I like all the first six songs; for the minuses Mr Richards and I’m Gonna DJ are both bobbins, and then the rest are somewhere between serviceable and solid - which given the state of the last two records, is way better than anyone had any right to expect.
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They bloody loved playing I’m Gonna DJ live, really weird choice.
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Trying to get back in this game…
I’ve not posted here since Green (I think) which is awful how much I worship Stipe etc. I want to catch up properly, but for now my thoughts can be summarised as:
Out Of Time: Forget the singles; the deep cuts are the true heart of this astonishing album
Automatic For The People So horribly overplayed by society in general, but I still love it with all my heart. I am currently learning how to read music and play piano at the age of 38, basically so I can play “Nightswimming”…
Monster Fuck anybody that says this isn’t a stomping singalong masterpiece featuring the dirtiest, fuzziest, nastiest guitar tones most fellow axemen (
) would DIE FOR
New Adventures In Hi-Fi Cut this down to a single LP and it’s the greatest work of art R.E.M. ever produced (and I mean it); otherwise it’s simply fabulous…
Up Apart from tracks 1-5 Up baffled me at the time, not helped by the fact that it came out on the same day as Spiritualized’s “Royal Albert Hall” live album which took up all my time.
Nowadays I see it as R.E.M.'s quiet masterpiece, and if they’d quit after this (Stipe’s lyrics to “Falls To Climb” shows he thought it would happen) they’d have left behind a pretty much flawless and definitely the greatest discography “rock” music has ever witnessed.
Reveal Loved it at the time (and used it as my alarm clock for most of summer 2001), but can’t be arsed even thinking about it now
Around The Sun Nah, fuck off mate. Not interested.
I bloody loved Accelerate when it came out, and I’m still really pissed off that I bought it for £9 on CD when I could’ve got the LP+CD for £11 instead (they were sat next to each other in Fopp; WHAT WAS I DOING?) and I still love it now. It’s so one-dimensional and trite but I don’t care, because those first three songs really do stand up to the greatest R.E.M. openings of all time; the slower songs (Until The Day Is Done & Sing For The Submarine) are nicely atmospheric rather than dull and only “I Wanna DJ” is a true dud. Yes, a huge part of me wishes they’d quit after “Up”, but I am so glad Accelerate exists; apart from anything else, it reminded me of how good my favourite band were after a long period of neglect on my part. TBH, what’s most scary of all is that this was more than a decade ago already… 
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Nightswimming was one of the first songs I learned to play properly on piano too. I find reading music a slow and torturous process, so it’s as much by memory as possible though.
Glad you’ve had chance to catch up on the rest though. Accelerate is such a breath of fresh air after thecladt two if nothing else, so glad to see it got a bit of love over theclast weeknor so.
Will give it the weekend for any last thoughts and then move us on to our last album on monday.
Ok, time for album number 15 and the final record of the listening club. I don’t know this record at all so will be hearing these songs for the first time this week and hoping the band went out on a high.
Let’s spend the week focusing on this release and then next week we can wrap things up with final album rankings and maybe Top 10 song lists?
This week’s album:
Collapse Into Now
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Thanks a bunch for coordinating this, been really enjoyable.
Like you, I’m also unfamiliar with Collapse Into Now, but a lot more optimistic for it after Accelerate.
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Same, pretty exciting that for most of us this is a ‘new’ R.E.M. album.
It’s been a great ride.
Listened more intently and a deeper dive into R.E.M. than I’d ever really done.
Even learnt a bunch of songs on guitar off the back of this 
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I have literally never heard this album (or Accelerate) so I may have to listen to both of them this week.
I really blame Around The Sun for turning me off new R.E.M. music at the time. there was just so much else going on that was incredibly interesting and Around The Sun was so limpid. Hopefully Accelerate and Collapse Into Now can be fun!
I guess I’m in a minority that is already well acquainted with Collapse Into Now. I flipped away from REM during Reveal and Around The Sun, but I got drawn in by the live album recorded in Ireland and that then drew me in heavily to Accelerate.
I loved the fact that Accelerate harked back a bit to an earlier rockier version of them but with that cleaner, modern production. But it’s best three songs are all at the front and it petered out somewhat.
So it was a bit of a shock to fall so deeply for Collapse Into Now when it came out. It’s definitely one of my favourite records of theirs. They sound more charged. Stipe’s on full enigmatic mode. Vocals are semi sung, semi spoken word a lot of the time. The first three songs are excellent but it’s still pretty darn good through to the end.
DISCOVERER - prob my fave opener of theirs along with Harbourcoat. Like that kind of Scots Highlandy guitar sound near the beginning, the deep guitar crunch in the chorus and that line “just the slightest bit of finesse might have made a little bit less mess” … yeah, well … quite… also the little laughs in the chorus.
ALL THE BEST - more power pop ala Accelerate’s finest cuts. “my quasimodo heart”… ha…“i’m in a part of your dreams that you don’t even understand”. pretty fun
UBERLIN - was the lead single. pretty but not quite as saccharin as some of their latter album attempts to be pretty. as a love song to commuting around berlin it’s a bit less plaintive than Leaving New York for example.
OH MY HEART - Oh this is fun! It’s a love song post storm to New Orleans. Slightly shanty-ish with brass lightly used.
IT HAPPENED TODAY - builds and builds and just takes off. the verses mix drums and hand claps sweetly. There’s some lovely rough harmonising that turns into some kind of chorus with smoother wailing over and over. Its much more than the sum of its parts.
EVERY DAY…- a bit nursery rhymey. Nice background harmonising again. Doesn’t overstay its welcome …like most of the songs on this record… it does its thing sweetly without being too long.
MINE SMELL LIKE HONEY…here he goes again. It’s about his farts? Or I read somewhere … his balls? This one is a little middle of the road, but is helped out by the guitars sounding a nice little bit dirty…
WALK IT BACK … doesnt reach the heights of some of their best ballads. But it’s still gorgeous… a nostalgic torch song… again gorgeous background harmonies in a very sweet chorus.
ALLIGATOR AVIATOR…silly silly and fun thrash along. Some nonsense rhymes. A bit of throwaway fun … nothing anyone would reach to play in and of itself but works well in the sequencing after Walk It Back
THAT SOMEONE IS YOU - fast powerpop singalong blink and you’ll miss it. love the “pull me up out of cartoon quicksand… pull me up out of me” line. it’s half an idea of a song but as they leave it at half a song in length that’s cool.
ME, MARLON BRANDO… good change of pace again. Pleasant enough.
BLUE - spoken word over … if I remember correctly Patti Smith singing with squally guitars… it’s quite Monster/New Adventures-y…an understated cousin of E-bow maybe. Very good and quite a jump from how the album drifted into throwaway powerpop in its second half.
And the last section of Blue is a reprise of Discoverer with an extended intro riff married withan extended chant version of the chorus. It’s a quaint little way to close.
All in all it’s well sequenced (by their standards)… a few real good songs and nothing that overstays it’s welcome. Like the way Michael varies his vocal delivery on most of the songs too. It sounds a lot more pop than I remember it being, and I imagine that doesn’t sit well with everyone, but this is at least their best album since Up or New Adventures depending on your take.
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You’re welcome. I’m glad it worked out so well. I’ve enjoyed an excuse to trawl back through their back catalogue again, and doing so chronologically for the first time has been quite revealing.
It’ll be interesting to see if a listening club for another band/artist can get off the ground once we’re done as per the other thread from a month or so back.
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Still getting to know the album, but as an early take - wow, how beautful and moving is this? Surely their best song since Electrolite.
The melody, the direct lyrics, the off kilter backing vocals and the Cajun/Green style instrumentation are all terrific. Nice production too - it feels like a song to turn up loud and really get immersed in.
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Planning on getting the Yo La Tengo listening club thread up and running once you’re all finished here!
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Yikes another 15 album discography band 
I’m watching the 1998 Jools Holland special (it’s on the live at the BBC box). It’s really great.
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I had REM at the BBC on today. They were properly on 
for that Glastonbury set.