Accelerate

Today is a sacred day for two reasons.

First, it is April Fools Day, the most high holiday of my friends from academy. They are on the west coast now, yes, but I'm half expecting to leave my apartment today to find my door cardboarded over, or at the very least to receive a few forged e-mails. So watch out.

Second, today R.E.M.'s new album drops. Growing up, R.E.M. taught me what indie rock was. They painted pictures of a south I had not yet seen, they said to high-school-frosh me "there is a world where crazed yet mellow guitars create beautiful landscapes where Michael Stipe is busy weaving threads, but Mike Mills will invite you in for a glass of lemonade." And I liked that. I was a guitarist reared on Hendrix and the blues, but R.E.M. was this wonderful alternate sonic possibility, constructed of blends and arpeggios. I went through the entire discography voraciously. I was about done with the then-last album, "up", when "Reveal" dropped. I dug the singles, but the album felt like someone else trying to be R.E.M. After hearing the singles for "Around the Sun", the last album (in the current issue of SPIN, guitarist Peter Buck refers to it only as "the Last Record") I didnt even buy it. I felt it was an important if bittersweet facet of growing up... Watching my heroes lose their touch, slide into the inevitable loss of inspiration and energy that befalls all who don't burn out. I tightened up my guitar strap and started rocking harder with Maxwell's Demon, to do my part filling the void thus opening in the world. I didn't look back, it was too painful. I just learned how to play half of "Reckoning", that's all.
Well.... A little bird sent me a copy of the new "Accelerate", due to drop today. Popped it in last night, and, damn--the boys are back. Now I'm not going to go off the deep end as some reviewers have. This is no grand return to the IRS years. There're still relatively few post-punk Four-on-the-floor, we're-gonna-knock-down-half-the-buildings-in-Athens drum beats (do check out Horse to Water, though). Buck's arpeggios are back (thank GOD!), but not as frenetic as they once were. The production clearly cost what all the albums from the IRS years cost combined, and I would like more Lo-Fi to match my favorite sonic landscapes. But all that being said... damn, this is good! Mills is on point as ever, returning to his off-mic backup-vocal-cries, Buck is getting his tone dirty again, not just distorted, and Stipe finally sounds like he's having fun again.

It's a good day for music.