Dave Woodhall has been listening to the new REM album, Collapse Into Now. Fans might think they’ve heard it before.
It’s been a long while since a new REM album was one of the most eagerly-awaited musical events of the year. So long, in fact, that such a thing had to be bought from a record shop (younger readers may have to ask what these places were). Since then we’ve seen file-sharing and other media such as Spotify taking off, so you won’t have to leave the house to get hold of Collapse Into Now.
And when you do, anyone who did hand over their cash to Virgin, HMV or that funny long-haired bloke at Swordfish will get an immediate feeling of familiarity. Opening tracks Discoverer and All The Best sound as though they could have come from the Green/Out of Time era when the band was on its way to superstardom. Uberlin and the following track Oh My Heart, meanwhile, wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Automatic for the People. That’s understandable; when you’re at this stage of your career there’s not much point in trying to break new ground. REM fans have grown with the band – this is an album that will be heard in the car between business appointments. It will never influence a new generation of guitar-wielding heroes-in-waiting.
It Happened Today, featuring Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, has been available on download for some time and it’s a nicely rocking folky tune which this time draws its inspiration from the band’s breakthrough album Out of Time.
The softer side of the band continues with Every Day Is Yours To Win, which this time sounds a bit like British band Shack before they became obsessed with West Coast Americana. Mind Sound Like Honey for some reason made me think of the Undertones before the more familiar REM sound returns with Walk It Back.
Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter is a fine rocking song which I can see as a show closer in years to come. That Someone Is You, the shortest track on the album at 1 min 43 secs, is another Green soundalike, and is followed by the wonderfully titled Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I, its poignancy going right back to the band’s early days.
The closing track, Blue, features Patti Smith and a lot of feedback as the song ends by returning to the chorus of Discoverer. Whether this was meant to have any deep significance or is just a neat way of ending the album with a surprise, I don’t know.
Collapse Into Now is the best collection of sings REM have released for some time – not since 1996’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi could they seriously claim to have put out better. The days have long gone when an REM album set standards and broke new ground, plugged on mega-stadium world tours and racking up multi-platinum awards. But thirty years on, they’re a band who can still come up with a new release you want to buy, and that in itself is some achievement.