I may actually not be qualified to review R.E.M.’s new album, Collapse into Now. Not until the test results come back and I find out whether I’m an elitist or an objective judge of quality. The former condition doesn’t have a good prognosis. It means that my belief that R.E.M. were better before you could make out their lyrics is merely—and perhaps subconsciously—the product of not wanting to share them with the masses.
My relationship with R.E.M. dates back almost 30 years, when I was reading New York Rocker. Tucked in between the Ramones and Blondie updates, I happened to notice a tiny article about the band, whose Southernness was always emphasized. This was the year synth bands held the New Wave torch, and did so with butter-fingered unworthiness. And an era when I was devouring new bands faster than I could find them. Faster than they could form.
I bought Chronic Town, R.E.M.’s first EP, and was blown away. Could it be, I wondered, that beyond the arpeggios, production tricks and interesting harmonies there was something deep going on? The word “deep,” of course, once held great meaning in rock & roll—but the word’s face value was unmasked by a reputation for fraud. Still, Michael Stipe’s vocals were deep; and the group seemed to hint at something greater than the sum of its three letters. At first R.E.M. struck me as a pop group; but in the edgy layers of sound, I could hear a fierce battle to be more than that. At first, critics compared them to the Byrds, an influence that R.E.M. coolly denied. At the time, the denial struck me as self-deluding and elitist. Now, however, I believe they were influenced by the ‘70s, not the ‘60s, and wanted to bring punk into a new realm. They were the missing link between Patti Smith and the Smiths. In retrospect, the similarity of R.E.M. to groups like the Byrds had less to do with being their stylistic brethren than picking their way out of a like-minded amateurism. Like Peter Buck, the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn at first could hardly play the guitar. McGuinn’s jangly, note-simple approach was rooted not in a musical vision but a Mel Bay bypass.
These days, R.E.M. are anything but simple. The songs on Collapse into Now are busily produced, with shifting, twisting rhythms; but they still flaunt R.E.M.’s beating-around-the-bush catchiness; and on this album the combo is in full-personality gear.
The title Collapse into Now shows the cryptic hipness to which R.E.M. is drawn when it comes to naming their albums. Didn’t they once have a record called Murmur that said it all in one word? Perhaps the band has more to tell—or nothing to say but more ways to say it. “Uberlin” is lovely—a mid-tempo pop song flavored with, among other things, distant handclaps and bird sounds. “All the Best” has the same minor-keyed haunting quality as “Losing My Religion.” It’s not as if that song has been born again, though, and “Losing My Religion” is actually better than “All the Best.” Some R.E.M. titles come off as ingenuous if meant seriously; for example “Every Day is Yours to Win”—or have a word-game-esque sense of alliteration, such as “Alligator _ Aviator _ Autopilot_ Antimatter.” But those songs earn their titles—which I mean as a compliment.
On first listen, Collapse into Now struck me as R.E.M. simply re-stirring the pot, serving leftovers in a picnic between a frat house and a church. But giving it a second spin was, ironically, like hearing the album for the first time. Collapse into Now is seriously beautiful—and comically beautiful. It forces me to struggle with the question of whether or not I’m really an elitist; because I can trace my sense of apathy toward R.E.M. back to the very minute they became famous. It’s also around the time CDs began to usurp vinyl as the format of choice. It’s when drummer Bill Berry dropped out. What’s more, my loss of interest in the group coincides with the point at which Michael Stipe’s vocals began to make the lyrics understandable as opposed to a jumbled mess of hypnotically phrased word pieces. He may have been the medicine man of poetry, but I, for one, enjoyed not understanding the lyrics. Still, this is a brand-new day for R.E.M.—a chance to tweak and loosen everything that’s made them the alt-rock of Gibraltar. Whether or not the band is deep, they have clearly outlived their irrelevance.
