REM
Collapse Into Now

There was a time when the release of a new REM album was an Event with a capital E.

I remember staying up one cold night in 1996 to hear New Adventures in Hi-Fi for the first time, played on the radio in its entirety the day of release.

A few subpar albums and the mp3 revolution later, it seems like Collapse Into Now has taken forever to arrive.

REM's been drop-feeding lyrics and tracks via YouTube and Facebook for months now, milking restored confidence in the band since 2007's reputation-saving Accelerate. But despite guitarist Peter Buck's claim the album is "song for song, the best thing we've ever done", their renewed acceleration hits a few speed bumps on Collapse.

It's certainly not the best thing they've ever done, nor is it their "best record since Out of Time", as bassist Mike Mills told Rolling Stone magazine. (One can only assume he forgot their undisputed masterpiece – Automatic For the People – came out the year afterwards.)

It doesn't have the stomp and glam of Monster, the atmosphere of New Adventures, or the exploratory, experimental nature of Up and Reveal.

What it does have is a solid core of decent songs that tick most of the boxes, but not the few extra that made REM one of the greatest bands of the last three decades.  

There's mandolin, double-tracked Rickenbackers, Mills wailing in the background – all REM staples which should please longtime fans of the Athens trio – and a cameo from Patti Smith, all but reprising her appearance on oddball New Adventures single 'E-Bow (The Letter)'.

They also keep some of the grunt and post-grunge Monster guitars they brought back on Accelerate, best heard on 'Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter' and 'Mine Smell Like Honey', which stripped of its distortion could have been on one of the band's IRS records. It's the best track here, no doubt. 'That Someone Is You' mines similar depths of the REM canon, with almost as much success.

'Discoverer' is another highlight – it not only opens the album well, but returns to close it just as strongly, diluting any bad taste the quite dreary Patti Smith-featuring 'Blue' might otherwise had left.

Eddie Vedder and Peaches' efforts are much better – even if they're a little anonymous. In all the wailing in 'It Happened Today', you'd be hard-pressed to even know it was Vedder, such is the lowering of Michael Stipe's voice into middle-aged gruffness. And Peaches, well, perhaps the less of her personality she puts into REM, the better. Either way, 'Alligator…' is good.

It's probably the ballads that let the record down. They're not bad, just lacking something which made previous REM songs in this mode, like 'Find the River' and 'Star Me Kitten' what they are.

But it could be the production – Jacknife Lee returns after manning the boards on Accelerate, turning up that record's compression another degree, to the album's detriment. Where on older albums like 1994's Monster the guitars would bite and felt genuinely heavy, here they fizz and melt into the overall sound, much like the drums, acoustic guitars, everything else. And if there's a bass guitar on the record that isn't just aping the guitar, you could have fooled me.

This relentless aural assault means Collapse Into Now is constantly full of sound – not all of it necessary – and the songs often feel overloaded and cramped. Remember how thrilling the army sergeant and helicopters sounded on arrival in 'Orange Crush'? If they tried a similar thing with today's sonics, it'd just be more background noise.

All in all, Collapse Into Now is an OK record from a band that's known better times, but isn't dead yet. On the strength of this record REM might not be out of time, but they're certainly no longer automatic for most people.

Try it if you like: Pearl Jam, The Decemberists, REM's Accelerate
Buy Collapse Into Now from iTunes