fables of the reconstruction

R.E.M. were needing inspiration and reached their destination with gravity and good advices written on southern gothic wisdom walls.  After two celebrated albums ('Murmur' and 'Reckoning') with the production team of Mitch Easter and Don Dixon, the band decided to record with British producer Joe Boyd, famous for his work with Fairport Convention and Nick Drake.  


Peter Buck reveals:   "Both Mitch Easter and Don Dixon were busy doing their own creative stuff and we all felt that it would be good to have a change, because they didn't want to get associated with us permanently any more than we wanted to be associated with them permanently...We had a list of producers who were interested in us, and Joe Boyd was one of them.  We do things by intuition; we didn't think whether he had a track record or whatever - I liked his records, I liked him.  We just decided on the spur of the moment, 'Okay let's do it with him.  Let's fly to England tomorrow and do the record.'  It was that simple.  We met him on Wednesday, and we decided on Thursday to fly to England, and we left Friday."  

'Fables of the Reconstruction' was recorded during  February and March of 1985 at Livingston Studios in London with engineers Berry Clempson and Tony Harris.   The album features  Bill Berry on drums and backing vocals (credited as "WT Berry – Best Boy");  Peter Buck on guitar, banjo, and harmonica (credited as "PL Buck – Ministry of Music");  Mike Mills on bass guitar, backing vocals, and piano (credited as "ME Mills – Consolate Mediator");  and  Michael Stipe on lead vocals (credited as "JM Stipe – Gaffer Interpreter");  with  David Bitelli on tenor and baritone saxophone for "Cant Get There from Here"; Camilla Brunt on violin for "Feeling Gravitys Pull";  Jim Dvorak on trumpet for "Cant Get There from Here";  Philippa Ibbotson on violin for "Feeling Gravitys Pull";  David Newby on cello for "Feeling Gravitys Pull";  and Peter Thomas on tenor saxophone for "Cant Get There from Here"



Mills muses:   "We didn’t have a clear idea what we were going for on Fables – we didn’t have time to formulate one. We wanted this new album to be a little more focused. Some of our best stuff is on Fables, but as a whole I think it’s weak. We wanted to have enough time to write good songs for this one...I thought Michael’s voice was pretty clear on Fables. It’s just that what he says is not what you expect to hear. At first, you might not follow his thought because he leaves out words that normally would be there. But if you keep listening, you can follow him. Michael’s gotten a little more confident and better at it every time we record."

Stipe says:   "We suddenly had all these songs that were somehow narrative.  Although I hesitate to use that term because all along we've said that our songs are not stories - not a beginning and an end with a middle and some kind of crisis point that has to be resolved.  Most of these, I would say, would be a slice somewhere out of the middle, there's not really a beginning or and end.  If you had to call it a beginning or an end.  If you had to call it a narrative, it's probably not a complete one.  That is real new for me, though, and it's real new for us.  I found myself surrounded a whole lot when we were writing these songs by fables and nursery rhymes and Uncle Remus and old tales.  The idea of stories being passed down and becoming a tradition, and having those stories become as much a part of a way of living or a particular area that you live in as the religion or the trees or the weather, I like the connection between that and the South  ...  "'Reconstruction of the Fables of the...'  The cyclical title, to me, really defined the whole entity that the band was taking on at that time. 'Fables' brings up the whole thing about storytelling, and that kinda ties in with lost heritage, the tradition of a story being passed on from generation to generation."




Berry considers:   "The first thing I thought of was literally the definition of the word, and that was what we did when we wen to in to write the songs and do the record.  We pretty much just stripped down and started over, because we did write all those songs at one time."




'Fables of the Reconstruction'  became their biggest album yet, going to number forty in Canada, thirty-five in the UK, twenty-nine in New Zealand, and twenty-eight in the US.  






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"Cant Get There from Here" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD3cYh5Pp1I




"Driver 8"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuFId1RYSZE






'Fables of the Reconstruction'
full album:



All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe except as indicated.

Side one – "A Side"
00:00  "Feeling Gravitys Pull" – 4:51
04:52  "Maps and Legends" – 3:10
08:03  "Driver 8" – 3:23
11:27  "Life and How to Live It" – 4:06
15:35  "Old Man Kensey" (Jerry Ayers, Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe) – 4:08
Side two – "Another Side"
19:46  "Cant Get There from Here" – 3:39
23:25  "Green Grow the Rushes" – 3:46
27:12  "Kohoutek" – 3:18
30:29  "Auctioneer (Another Engine)" – 2:44
33:12  "Good Advices" – 3:30
36:43  "Wendell Gee" – 3:01




Rockpalast October 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBVVtNnHeEg



0:01:22 - Feeling Gravitys Pull
0:06:07 - Harborcoat
0:10:00 - Sitting Still
0:13:20 - Maps and Legends
0:16:47 - Fall On Me
0:19:46 - Green Grow the Rushes
0:23:44 - Driver 8
0:27:34 - Hyena
0:30:36 - So.Central Rain
0:34:42 - Have You Ever Seen the Rain?
0:37:30 - Can't Get There From Here
0:41:30 - King of the Road
0:42:49 - Seven Chinese Brothers
0:47:05 - Auctioneer (Another Engine)
0:50:17 - Old Man Kensey
0:54:25 - Little America (Big Little USA)
0:57:15 - Pretty Persuasion

INTERMISSION

Encore 1:
1:03:10 - Theme From Two Steps Onward
1:08:10 - Toys in the Attic
1:10:53 - See No Evil
1:13:38 - Second Guessing

Encore 2:
1:18:50 - Ghost Riders in the Sky
1:21:21 - (Don't Go Back To) Rockville
1:25:55 - We Walk / Falling in Love Again / Behind Closed Doors
1:30:11 - Paint it, Black.

reckoning

R.E.M. sought to recreate their live sound in the studio with rivers of suggestion that coalesced into this persuasive pop prognostication.  The band was a bit flabbergasted with the massive critical success of their debut.   Michael Stipe reflects:   "'Murmur' was our first album.  It was named the Record of the Year by Rolling Stone and the Village Voice- the two most important music magazines at the time.  Record of the Year over Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'; which I don't think any one remembers except me.  I was twenty-three at the time and Michael Jackson had been a hero since I was very young; and that was a little bit of a wake up call for me:  'What on Earth is this?'    So with 'Reckoning', we were trying, I think, because 'Murmur' was so well received, and we were still really figuring out what it is that we do, and this beautiful record just kind of fell out of us.  'Reckoning' we recorded and mixed very fast; so that we could hopefully bypass the sophomore jinx that we wouldn't try to make 'Murmur part two' and we wouldn't go off on some insane tangent that was a reaction to 'Murmur'.  Instead we just took the songs that we had and we recorded them in the most basic way that we could...Part of it was financial; part of it was just get in there -economy-  get in there, do it, get out." 

'Reckoning' was produced by Don Dixon and Mitch Easter at Reflection Sound in Charlotte, North Carolina with Bill Berry on drums, percussion, and backing vocals;  Peter Buck on guitar;  Mike Mills on bass guitar, piano, and backing vocals;  and Michael Stipe on lead vocals and harmonica.   The recording took place over sixteen days in December of 1983 and January of 1984.  During the sessions Dixon fashioned a makeshift binaural heads using a cardboard box and two microphones to create a three dimensional stereo sound.  The result is a much cleaner sound that brings together the experimental feel of 'Murmur' with the pop sheen of their EP 'Chronic Town'. 

Mills reveals:    "We wanted to make records that were timeless, and we rejected anything that would make them sound dated. When we made 'Murmur' and 'Reckoning', every band in the world was using a Yamaha DX7, which we despised. The sound of it was just miserable. While I love a lot of that popular synthetic music, we didn't want to sound like that, because when you hear it now you think, 'Oh, 1983!'  We wouldn't be who we are without I.R.S. Records, but when we were making 'Murmur', they put a little pressure on Mitch Easter and Don Dixon to add some of that contemporary sound. But when Peter and I got the mix, we said, 'No fucking way.' So we went back up and sat with Mitch and Don and forced them to remix the songs. In the end, we pretty much got what we wanted."

Buck considers:    "We wrote the whole album in two weeks between tours...It was just serendipity. My Telecaster got stolen, and I went to Chick Piano in Athens, which is run by this nice family, and they had three used guitars. I pulled out the Rickenbacker because it had this great neck. After I got that guitar, suddenly everything seemed to come together, soundwise ... Part of the thing about liking us is that we're not a really obvious band in a lot of ways.  You have to think a bit, to throw away your preconceptions about what rock 'n' roll can be...But there aren't that many misconceptions about us basically because there are no conceptions. Just confusion."

The working title of the album was 'File Under Water' which appears on the spine along with 'Reckoning' on US pressings.  Howard Finster did the cover art based on a sketch that was provided by Stipe.  Instead of side one and two, the record designated them as Left and Right.  'Reckoning' went to number ninety-one in the UK, twenty-seven in the US, and twenty-three in New Zealand.  The album was eventually certified gold.  Athens filmmaker James Herbert directed a short film 'Left of Reckoning' that features the band wandering around folk artist R.A. Miller's Whirlgig Farm in Rabbittown, Georgia set to the music of the first half of the album.  







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"Harborcoat" 



"7 Chinese Bros." 



"So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" 



"Pretty Persuasion" 



"Time After Time (AnnElise)" 




"Second Guessing" 





"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville"




"Little America" 










'Reckoning' 
full album:
https://myspace.com/rem/music/album/reckoning-deluxe-edition-12637774

http://www.last.fm/music/R.E.M./Reckoning


All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe except where noted.

Side one – Left
"Harborcoat" – 3:54
"7 Chinese Bros." – 4:18
"So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" – 3:15
"Pretty Persuasion" – 3:50
"Time After Time (Annelise)" – 3:31
Side two – Right
"Second Guessing" – 2:51
"Letter Never Sent" – 2:59
"Camera" – 5:52
"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" – 4:55
"Little America" – 2:58


bonus tracks
"Wind Out" (with friends) (Jerry Ayers, Berry, Buck, Mills, Stipe) – 1:58
"Pretty Persuasion" (live in studio) – 4:01
"White Tornado" (live in studio) – 1:51
"Tighten Up" (Archie Bell and Billy Butler) – 4:08
"Moon River" (Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer) – 2:21




bonus disc 
(Live at the Aragon Ballroom)



"Femme Fatale" (Lou Reed) – 3:19
"Radio Free Europe" – 3:54
"Gardening at Night" – 3:38
"9–9" – 2:48
"Windout" – 2:13
"Letter Never Sent" – 3:03
"Sitting Still" – 3:13
"Driver 8" – 3:28
"So. Central Rain" – 3:23
"7 Chinese Bros." – 4:27
"Harborcoat" – 4:34
"Hyena" – 3:26
"Pretty Persuasion" – 3:49
"Little America" – 3:23
"Second Guessing" – 3:07
"(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" – 4:30

green

R.E.M. made the move to a major label and major keys with the acoustic folk, heavy rock, and diverse pop experiments of this clarified and credulous call to arms.  With the platinum success of 'Document' the band was poised for a breakthrough; but they were not satisfied with the distribution efforts of IRS Records and eventually decided to go with Warner Brothers Records, who assured them creative freedom.  

Peter Buck explained:    "Unfortunately, we had almost nonexistant distribution in Europe with IRS, which is probably the reason we left, because we like the people at IRS. We went to Germany and Green On Red outsells us three to one there. They're really good guys, but they shouldn't be outselling us. We should at least be equal. I get tired of going all the way to Europe and playing for an audience that's only G.I.'s. Hopefully, Warner Brothers will rectify that for us. I want our records to at least be available."

Mike Mills expounded:   "We've reached the point where we're sitting on the razor's edge-the place we never wanted to be.  We try not to look at this as a make-or-break album or tour, but in essence, it probably is because everyone has set it up that way...People are waiting to see if they were right about us (in a series of positive reviews) or if they can throw us to the dogs yet.  We were writing and playing songs to suit our ability. We never had any one style, or were very goal-oriented. We kept playing and things happened." 

Stipe considered:    "My idea of mainstream American culture is pretty tainted. I have a great joy in having been delivered from the mainstream. A great joy in deliverance...I still don't understand technology. How my voice goes in the studio microphone, through a process that ends with that same voice emerging out of something that resembles a place mat. Y'know? I'm not a Luddite. I understand the advances.....Give me a manual typewriter over a word processor, though. I get an objectivity in my writing that comes from the sensation of hitting the keys, you know the '4' on the album sleeve - that's a type, an error I left in. I meant to hit the 'R' and my left index finger hit the '4' instead. I left it in...Intrinsically, I've learned.....erm, for myself and a lot of other people - even if they don't recognise it and, if they do, they don't tend to admit it - that mistakes are often the most creative, no, inspired, part of anything I do. To be able to recognise that and enlarge on that. To make those mistakes and deliver whatever it is you're doing - I've been able to succeed with that. My entire style of singing - to cheapen it by calling it that - comes from that base. Not too many people have homed in on that before...If there's a mistake on 'Green' its 'cos I made it. The others have said the same. I don't feel that way about 'Document' though we were pretty 'much in control... 'Pageant' was real outta control. I has a lotta imput but the mix still slipped away. The process was beyond us right up until 'Green'."

'Green' was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis, TN and Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY with Bill Berry on drums and backing vocals, bass guitar on "You Are the Everything", "The Wrong Child", and "Hairshirt"; Peter Buck on guitar, mandolin, and drums on "Eleventh, Untitled Song"; Mike Mills on bass guitar, keyboards, accordion, and backing vocals; and Michael Stipe on vocals;    with Bucky Baxter on pedal steel guitar on "World Leader Pretend"; Keith LeBlanc on percussion on "Turn You Inside-Out"; and Jane Scarpantoni on cello on "World Leader Pretend".  The band produced the album with Scott Litt, who had produced 'Document'.  

Buck     "We were really focused and worked hard to make the record we felt we needed to make. It's a really strong record, which at the same time, isn't like an R.E.M. record. There are no typical R.E.M. songs...Minor key, mid-tempo, enigmatic, semi-folk-rock-balladish things. That's what everyone thinks and to a certain degree, it's true. "Driver 8" and "South Central Rain" epitomize to a lot of people what this band does. Everything on this album is in a major key, essentially, and that changes the tenor of the record. Minors are wistful, sad keys; majors are more aggressive and harsh. We wrote major key rock songs and switched instruments."

Mills    "We didn't want to write traditional R.E.M. songs.  We were all about having fun and trying to do something different...Peter was tired of the electric guitar and wanted to move into different sounds.  We all wanted to shake things up, and we were starting to enjoy more acoustic things as well as rock stompers. The 'Hairshirt' mandolin riff is actually Bill Berry's...Our feeling was, 'We take the best songs'.  We knew there would be enough unifying themes to make it hold together. You have Michael's voice and the one producer. That keeps things in the ballpark, and it gives you a freedom to have a lot of different kings of songs, different tempos, different instrumentations, and things still hold together as a piece." 

'Green' went to twenty-seven in the UK, fourteen in Canada, thirteen in Australia, twelve in the US, six in New Zealand, and number three in Austria.  It has sold over four million copies worldwide.  





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'Orange Crush' went to the top of the US alternative and modern rock charts. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mSmOcmk7uQ





'Stand' also hit number one on the US alternative and modern rock charts and became the band's second top ten single on the pop chart.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKKqLl_ZEEY





Pop Song 89
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjMwfDFypa4




Turn You Inside Out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBS6N1k4FsQ





World Leader Pretend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A1jLc71tlk

'Green' 
full album:





All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe.

Side one – "Air side"
"Pop Song 89" – 3:04
"Get Up" – 2:39
"You Are the Everything" – 3:41
"Stand" – 3:10
"World Leader Pretend" – 4:17
"The Wrong Child" – 3:36
Side two – "Metal side"
"Orange Crush" – 3:51
"Turn You Inside-Out" – 4:16
"Hairshirt" – 3:55
"I Remember California" – 4:59
"Untitled" – 3:10

murmur

R.E.M. overgrew the underground with the mysterious impressionist mumblings and driving melodic melancholy of this murky masterpiece. After the success of their 'Chronic Town' EP the group began working on their debut album with producer Stephen Hague; but they were unhappy with the results. IRS agreed to let them work with Mitch Easter again after hearing the results of a trial session. Easter co-produced the recording at Reflection Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina with Don Dixon. 'Murmur' features Bill Berry on percussion, drums, backing vocals, bass guitar, and piano; Peter Buck on guitar; Mike Mills on bass guitar, piano, backing vocals, and drums; and Michael Stipe on vocals. 

Buck confesses: "I'd always loved music, and worked in record stores, but I'd never formed a band, because I always thought you had to have some great gift to do it - though I'm living proof you don't! Anyway, I guess the air in Athens at the time was that it was okay to form a band, and Michael talked me into it. We're all pretty unprofessional thought Mike and Bill had played in marching bands at high school and so knew their instruments a bit but I at the time didn't have a clue...Anyway, we started playing and people started offering us money for dates - 50 dollars here, 75 dollars there and without even knowing about it, three or four months after forming, we had 30-40 songs of our own, and we were playing every weekend. Then one day we woke up and thought, 'Hey, we're in a band, maybe we should try a little harder so we started phasing out things that we were bored with, like day jobs and school, and within about six of seven months we managed to go full time.' It wasn't particularly easy, but we worked a lot harder than anyone else, I've ever heard of. We were quite an anomaly in that we were in a bar band that could play pizza parlors and pool halls, and we did that for about a year and a half. We kinda established a circuit of places were no-one else would have played. It certainly wasn't big time, but we were enjoying ourselves - we got to travel, and slept on people's floors, and drank beer twenty-four hours a day...Over the last year the radio stations have been realizing that more and more people have been listening to radio less and less, and they've been going through a real panic situation because they don't know what to play. Then they've been hiring all these guys who also don’t know what they're doing! - to tell them what to do , and they say 'Play new music. So what's new music? They don't know! We sneaked in the back door - 'Oh they've got guitars, they're a bit different, let's put them on!' And it was kinda cool because we'd be stuck in between Def Leppard and the Eurythmics, and I can't imagine people understanding what was going on but it was interesting for us, because we got a foot in the door through all the confusion...Oh sure. There's millions of good bands there, but a lot of them are on real small labels that don't have the clout to get them distributed."

Mills recalls: "Back then, we were living the dream: four guys in a van hitting the road, conquering clubs one night at a time. That's all it is, the gear and a gang. First, you had to prove that you had something to offer, so the early tours were us going out and playing to very, very small crowds. But every time we came back to a town, we had more people. Without fail. We knew we were pretty good; we just didn't know how good. There was a lot of the punk and DIY ethic involved. In our minds, the way you became a good band was going out and playing as often and in as many places as possible. We were doing what we knew bands did."

'Murmur' made it number thirty-six on the US album chart and became one of the most universally acclaimed records of 1983. Stipe considers: "What do they have to think about me? They come to a club, they like the way I move, a and they like the way I sing, they maybe get some feeling out of what we do. What more do they need?...If it makes them sad, fine. If it makes them happy, fine. If it makes them elated, fine...I'm not willing, and the whole band is not willing to throw a diatribe at anybody. Nobody cares, or nobody would care, about where I stand politically or socially or what my love life is like...Who wants to hear it from me? I'm not some great genius...I have no great story to tell: no great anecdotes. None of us do...If you want to talk about politics of your love life or social problems or what it's like to live in 1983, then you should do it somewhere other than on the stage...Emotion: one song might be really sad for me and for a person in the audience. Or for Peter it might be a real uplifting type of song. What's being said doesn't matter that much. It's the feeling, the mood."





http://remhq.com/














"Radio Free Europe"










"Talk About the Passion" 











'Murmur'

full album:

All songs written by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, except where noted.

Side one

"Radio Free Europe" – 4:06

"Pilgrimage" – 4:30

"Laughing" – 3:57

"Talk About the Passion" – 3:23

"Moral Kiosk" – 3:31

"Perfect Circle" – 3:29

Side two

"Catapult" – 3:55

"Sitting Still" – 3:17

"9–9" – 3:03

"Shaking Through" – 4:30

"We Walk" – 3:02

"West of the Fields" (Berry, Buck, Mills, Stipe, and Neil Bogan) – 3:17

live 1982

'Murmur' album cover field of kudzu.

accelerate

R.E.M. revisited the janglepop of their past with these lean guitar riffs and taut rhythms to make short work of a comeback.  'Accelerate' was recorded at Armoury Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Grouse Lodge Studios in County Westmeath, Ireland; and Seney-Stonewall Chapel in Athens, Georgia, United States; with additional recording in Olympia Theatre, Dublin, Ireland and Mike Mills' home in Athens, Georgia.  For the first time, the band decided to work with producer Jacknife Lee.  Michael Stipe reveals:    "It was Edge actually who kind of pushed us toward Jacknife. He had worked with U2 and Edge thought it would be a great marriage of minds for us and Jacknife to go into the studio together. I was really thrilled with the work he had done on Snow Patrol and Bloc Party. When we met him, he was really good and straight talking, so we were excited. Smart guy. It seemed like it would be a good mix...I think he's got his own style, but more than anything it's probably just a directness, a straightforward way of communicating, which is something that the band we were looking for in ourselves on this record [needed]. And he definitely has his own sound. I think he does, anyway. It's a little different. He doesn't necessarily come from rock music and so the universe that he collides with our universe is interesting. I like the sounds he brought and I like the enthusiasm he had for the material and for helping us to make what he wanted to be a great R.E.M. record. I think we came pretty close, you know?...The material was basically when we brought Jacknife into the equation. What it was, really, was the band realizing that somewhere in the past couple of records, in the past 10 years, we had figured out how to completely lose focus in the studio-- with no one to blame but ourselves. We were working with an excellent producer named Pat McCarthy, someone who did not have an enviable job of trying to get the three of us to agree on anything or even sit down at table and talk about it.  He had a really tough job-- particularly on the last record, because we released a best-of right in the middle of it and went out and toured that. We came back and tried to pick up where we had left [off]. We had just completely lost focus on it. So when we went to write this material and start working on it-- and again this is before Jacknife came in-- we wanted something that was super-immediate and we wanted something that felt kind of raw. We went to the most obvious place, which was to do really fast songs that were really short. Peter did what he does, I did what I do, and Mike did what he does, so we kind of trimmed the fat, if you will, and got down to the very basics that make each of us musicians. And so what you're left with is this type of material performed with Peter doing... a couple of times in the past ten years, I've said to him, I want that thing again. Just for the longest time I said, Stop doing that, to Peter. Or, Mike would be like, The vocal is really great as it is, and it's coming from an articulated place conceptually, so I don't think it really needs background vocals. So he wouldn't do background vocals. Or, I would say, Yeah, I think it stands alone. Or whatever. So anyway, we threw our cards on the table and did what comes naturally when we've got a more broken-down palette of colors to work with. And that's what you wind up with. I'm really happy with it."

Mike Mills reflects:   "I don't think Around the Sun is a bad record. I think our problem was that we weren’t focused, that we weren't all on the same page. We were pulling in different directions. And that's kind of pointless. It makes it very difficult to make a good record...It happens. Any long-term relationship has ups and downs, and you just have to maintain communications, and some times that’s easier than others...It's a collective decision. You just have to sit down and go, 'If we're going to do this, we have to do it in the right way.' And that's what we did. We all realized that we need to be pulling in the same direction, and once we decided that, it was pretty simple."

Peter Buck considers:    "It's a process that is always kind of mysterious. To a certain degree, when we are doing this stuff, we are doing this to excite Michael about getting inspired. For him, he really wants to hear something and be inspired to sing something. It's an amazing thing to have him do, but he doesn't finish every song and say, 'Here, take your pick.' It's really the things that really move him. So he'll listen to the stuff in a few months, and ideally there will be enough there to spark his interest...One thing about our band is that no matter what kind of record we do, onstage it is a very powerful kind of experience. I think we were all talking on the tour about trying to capture what that was for the last record. I wrote a lot of quieter songs that I didn't even bother to bring in because it wasn't where we were going. This record, I want it to be broader; I think Michael is into that. So there are some really pretty acoustic things, some really total noisy rock, and some kind of poppy stuff. It runs the gamut. Ideally, if it were me making all the decisions, I'd say the record would be a lot broader than the last one. But still, I want to do it really quickly and immediately and not do a huge amount of overdubs. The last record, of the 11 songs, probably nine of them had virtually no overdubs. They were all complete live takes with maybe one extra guitar added at the chorus. And I liked that; it attracted me to just go in and play it like that."

'Accelerate' rocketed to fifty-two in Spain; twenty-nine in Japan; twenty-seven in Portugal; seventeen in France; thirteen in Australia; ten in Finland; seven in Sweden; five in New Zealand; two in Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the US; and number one in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK.  

http://www.remhq.com/

'Accelerate' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0xXGZWysIyb4qQbDlVjT4ugjJQzNdNAF

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUEqCC4J1Fyd3B8X9lIFfw91-BJjSYd5E


Accelerate from R.E.M. on Myspace.

"Living Well Is the Best Revenge"  – 3:11

"Man-Sized Wreath"  – 2:32

"Supernatural Superserious"  – 3:23

"Hollow Man"  – 2:39

"Houston"  – 2:05

"Accelerate"  – 3:33

"Until the Day Is Done"  – 4:08

"Mr. Richards"  – 3:46

"Sing for the Submarine"  – 4:50

"Horse to Water"  – 2:18

"I'm Gonna DJ"  – 2:07