#and/or a western accessible version of the story with cultural footnotes maybe

[uncultureddoubloon]

I should go read up on the Epic of Gilgamesh at some point. Never formally studied it on school, and I'd like to have more than a vague passing familiarity with the characters & plot/adventures/what happens. Best I got is recognizing a handful of names because they're connected in pop culture referencing the Epic

[projectalbum]

All the best. 200. “Accelerate,” 201. “Collapse Into Now,” 202. “Unplugged 1991/2001: The Complete Sessions” by R.E.M.

After exhaustive touring, a greatest hits disc, and a dud album, the lovable lads from Athens, R.E.M., wisely took some time to figure things out before regrouping.

The four-year absence didn’t register with me, as I was collecting the back catalogue during that break. As far as I was concerned, new material was everywhere I looked, filling up my burgeoning record collection as I finished high school and started making my way through college. By the time Accelerate (#200) burst onto the scene in March 2008, I was a junior in film school, about to attend my first documentary festival. I put aside an extra $15 from my work study job to pick up the CD the day of release— the first time I’d been able to perform that record store* ritual for my favorite band. *(Though I didn’t have access to any record stores at the time, so it was likely procured from the closest Wal-Mart.) 

Fast, lean, gritty, produced by a guy who goes by “Jacknife,” this set of songs could not be more of a deliberate course-correction from the overly fussy, mid-tempo Around The Sun. Peter Buck’s skills on the axe, often mixed way down on the previous album, here announce Accelerate's punk-ish purpose in the intro to “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” leading off with a dexterous riff before the drums come trampling in. Stipe spits furiously, with the best use of his full-throated tenor since New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and the rare bar to inspire a Fuck Yeah fist-pump: "Don't set your talking points on me / History will set me free / The future's ours and you don't even rate a footnote.” Recorded and released in the tail-end of the Bush years, there are unmistakable references, drawn in anger and in weariness, to the emotional tolls of that reign.

“If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will,” Stipe muses at the top of “Houston,” a hair over 2 minutes but suffused with poignancy. It’s an acoustically-driven Western-tinged ballad that hearkens back to “Swan Swan H” or “Monty Got A Raw Deal,” but here the drums are splashy and blown-out, the organ serves a bleating counterpoint to the vocal, and bowed electric guitar bleeds through into the verses, serious as storm clouds. The intriguing production choices are what mark it as the Accelerate twist on familiar R.E.M. tropes. The chorus: “Houston is filled with promise / Laredo's a beautiful place / Galveston sings like that song that I love / Its meaning has not been erased” is stirring, as if to absolve the Lone Star state for spawning the political dynasty that led to 2 disastrous presidencies. "Belief has not filled me / And so I am put to the test” are the last words before distortion drowns out the melody like a fatal wave. The song has never left my head.

“Until The Day Is Done” is a more familiar flavor of the band’s earnest political identity— it even ended up scoring a CNN-produced piece on environmental issues. The lyrics approach the first two verses of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” in reflecting a distressing capitalist landscape, and to read them is to find that the “business-first flat earthers” have only doubled-down in the decade since the song was released. But the lack of idiosyncrasies leaves us with a folky protest song, and it has a tendency to become oatmeal to the ear, nestled amongst the bolder sonic moments.

By which I mean the muscular guitar sounds and fast n’ furious arrangements on tracks like “Man-Sized Wreath,” “Accelerate,” “Horse To Water”— the revitalized band blowing up the electronic, art school solemnity of the preceding Bill Berry-less records. I remember I once put on Accelerate during a day of recording drive-by b-roll footage with some new coworkers, who enthused, “We were a little worried when you said you were gonna play R.E.M…. but this is really good!” I just glided past the implied criticism and took the positive note.

In early 2011, songs for their follow-up began to be released on YouTube and rolled out by the pop culture press. I’ll admit I was underwhelmed by what I heard. Accelerate’s novelty, its flouting of the band’s cliches, had me expecting another quantum leap in a wild direction. Collapse Into Now (#201) was feeling more like a greatest hits mashup.

“Discoverer” at times sounds like an interpolation of “Man-Sized Wreath” (compare the chorus of the former to the verses of the latter.) That exultant wordless harmonizing on “It Happened Today” is straight from “Belong” on Out of Time (plus special guest Eddie Vedder.) “Blue,” the closing track, takes equal parts New Adventures’ “E-Bow The Letter” (dark grinding minor key, Beat poetry, plus Patti Smith-voiced chorus) and Out of Time's “Country Feedback” (the chords sound similar, and the aching Peter Buck solo is back). I’d never before been able to identify the sonic inspirations so easily. However, for all my creeping dissatisfaction, as a true fanboy I knew the record would grow on me. The prophecy was indeed fulfilled.

The song that most represented the sound of a modern-day R.E.M. was “Mine Smell Like Honey.” It was unmistakably them, with the inscrutable lyrics, Michael in gravel-throated rock mode, a Mike Mills vocal harmony line designed to carry its own trajectory while lifting up the chorus, Buck with an indelible riff that doesn’t show off for its own sake— but it would fit right on modern rock radio in 2011, if that still existed. I had another one of my Best Buy PA system epiphanies, clicking this track into place, proving sometimes you need some huge speakers with good bass to truly experience certain songs. In a similar mode, “That Someone Is You” rockets by in under 2 minutes; a live-in-the-room ode to the feeling of meeting that exciting new person who'll lift you out of the mud. 

The mid-tempo balladry is back as well, diversifying the sound from the previous release. In “Oh My Heart,” a direct sequel to “Houston,” Stipe croons a New Orleans spiritual with "a new take on faith," while Buck's mandolin comes out of retirement for another sweet, sad melody, and Mills fills in the mournful choir. As with the song’s predecessor, it’s a high-point in the track listing that moves me whenever I hear it.

Before I had warmed to Collapse Into Now, I comforted myself with the idea that New LP equaled New Tour. I could finally catch my favorite band live! They told the press they had no plans to tour behind the record. Odd, but they were an institution, so they could take a pause. I’d recently witnessed Paul McCartney tearing through his hits in person, and he’d already blown past age 64. Then in September 2011, R.E.M. announced they had decided to “call it a day as a band”— a phrase designed to wave away the idea of Beatles-esque acrimony. I was, you can probably imagine, more than a little heartbroken. The previous tour had come within 2-and-a-half hours of my town back in ’08. At that point in my life, that seemed like a hassle: why not wait, see if they made it a little closer next time? Now, I wish I had put in the extra effort.

With this announcement, the sense of Collapse as R.E.M.’s tribute album to themselves came into focus. Stipe is even waving goodbye, for god’s sake, on the first album cover photo to clearly feature the faces of the whole band since 1985’s Fables of the Reconstruction. "It's just like me to overstay my welcome, bless” he sings with sheepish glee on “All The Best.” Shrouded by the spirit-radio-filtered effect of his “Blue” recitation comes his clearest statement of purpose: "I want Whitman proud. Patti Lee proud. My brothers proud. My sisters proud. I want me. I want it all,” and then Patti Lee (Smith), one of his earliest lead singer inspirations, draws the narrative to a close… before the ringing jangle of opener “Discoverer” reprises and concludes. The book’s been closed shut… but the story of the band’s music continues.

There was the inevitable plundering of the vaults. An over-arching Best Of record, finally combining songs from the I.R.S. and WB catalogues (didn’t buy it), with 3 brand new recordings (they’re ok). Two digital-only “Complete Rarities” collections, encompassing hours of b-sides and soundtrack cuts (lotta great stuff, but this week WB removed all of theirs from Spotify, so I’m pretty perturbed).

In 2014, 3 years into my mourning period, they announced Unplugged 1991/2001 (#202), a 2-CD set of their appearances on the MTV show where bands play intimate, stripped-down acoustic sets… you know, in front of multiple TV cameras capturing every angle. Now this got me excited, maybe more than I had been for their swan song record— Bob Dylan Unplugged, Paul McCartney Unplugged, and The Unplugged Collection Vol. 1 had all got a lot of play in my home through the years. Other than my favorite version of “Half A World Away” closing out the Vol. 1 compilation, and a burned, hand-labeled CD-R I had once glimpsed on a coffee table during a realtor’s house tour, recordings of R.E.M.’s appearance on the show didn’t seem to exist until now. I pre-ordered that bad boy.

The set is a snapshot of two very different eras for the band: Disc 1 features them on the cusp of superstardom fueled by Out Of Time’s success, with the classic lineup of Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe and support from Peter Holsapple. Disc 2 finds them down to a three-piece, supporting Reveal, a record that never got its due, with their frequent contributors Scott McCaughey and Joey Waronker filling out the sound. “Losing My Religion” is on both discs, of course, from the bright new hit that pumps up the crowd to a warmly-recieved old friend.

The treat in hearing these shows is also two-fold. There’s the way that familiar tunes get adapted to the setting: “It’s The End of the World...” is transformed into a Friday night Americana hoe-down, while “The One I Love” is slowed down to a gritty lament with a slightly varied vocal melody. After the 2nd chorus and an instrumental bridge in “Country Feedback,” Stipe folds lines from Dylan's “Like A Rolling Stone” into the tune, a goosebump-inspiring moment.

Then there’s the added benefit of songs that I’d once slept on revealing their power in the live arrangements. The 2001 show closes with several tracks from Reveal, and free of all electronic touches, the choruses of “Disappear” and “Beat A Drum,” well, revealed themselves to me, becoming new earworms and spawning a personal reevaluation of the album. “Find The River” had once been a pleasant-enough closer on Automatic For The People, but a step down from the iconic “Nightswimming” that precedes it. Now it’s a new favorite, and I’m prone to singing it loud with embarrassing over-earnestness.

With the band truly well and dissolved (and no cynical cash-grab “reunion tours” planned, those damn jerks and their integrity), the repackaging of older material is the only avenue left for unheard R.E.M. music. The studio albums are greeting their landmark anniversaries with special editions: Automatic’s 25th was recently celebrated with various configurations of physical release, including one with a disc of demos and a 5.1 surround sound Blu-ray that I WILL possess one day, damnit! Just this week, their social media team announced a sprawling set of BBC sessions and interviews, hopefully to be made available on streaming services in addition to the fancy 9-disc set (I know, sacrilege in my blog about physical media, but space is at a premium and I haven’t even COVERED the live DVDs and music video collections I already have of these guys).

There’s even a podcast exclusively about the band! The exceedingly silly interplay between Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott was enough to get me to listen to several eps of their previous U2-centric show (a band that I’m fairly positive towards), so "R U Talkin’ R.E.M. RE: ME?,” in which they go album-by-album through the discography, was appointment listening from the jump. I couldn’t help but sprinkle inside jokes from the podcast into my first entry. Fuckin’ stoked!

It’s hard to articulate how much R.E.M.’s music has meant to me. There’s undeniable power in finding art when you’re young and unsteady. To ally yourself with a favorite band, especially one that clearly creates from a place of conscience and empathy, is to find a solid stone floor that supports you when you’re at your most weighted down. It’s easy for me to hold onto nearly 2 dozen discs because there’s so much variety. They could uplift, interrogate the status quo, offer humor or succor or an outlet for the uncertainty we struggle with. Michael Stipe sang about identity, queerness, nature, hypocrisy, anger, tenderness, artists, politicians, outsiders, expressive freedom, and quiet contemplation. These lyrics came from what he saw and felt but they were conjured by the instrumentals constructed by Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and for years Bill Berry. Jangle-rock or country-western or chamber pop or folk or glam or electronica— they busted through genres with grace and power; immutability was not an option. They couldn’t finish a record until Michael had the words; Michael had their blueprint on tape to fill his ears until the images flowed.

“Here’s a little agit for the never believer / Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah / Here’s a little ghost for the offering,” Stipe sang in his 11th hour, one-take performance of “Man On The Moon.” Now I offer a 20-song Document of the R.E.M. songs that mean the most to me at this moment. It nearly killed me to whittle it down, and your favorite probably isn’t on it. The song I just quoted isn’t even on it! But that’s the power of R.E.M., where the subjective experience rules all.