THE NEW REM ALBUM...

THE NEW REM ALBUM

…is no such thing. It’s doubtful there’s been a new REM album for a good few years now, possibly not since Green. There have been REM album releases but they ‘ve had very little new about them. To announce a new REM album is a bit like announcing a new summer or a new rainstorm; eventually one will come along and although it may initially be refreshing, in the end it’ll turn out to be warm or wet, just like the one before it and the one that follows.

Collapse Into Now, which is what this REM album is called, is admittedly a pretty good example of its type. It’s probably the best REM album in a few years, possibly since Automatic For The People (which I must confess is where I fell out of love with the band). It does what it’s supposed to do in a functional matter, but that’s to be expected. This is their fifteeneth album. Most other bands would be ecstatic to reach fifteen albums, especially with near as damnit the same personnel as they started with. REM aren’t exactly the Sugababes on that score.

The downside to the continuity of personnel is that continuity of creativity inevitably accompanies it. Being in the same band for as long as the three remaining REMmers have isn’t the same as going to an office and sitting in front of a spreadsheet for the same period, but there’s always the danger – especially with a band as successful as REM – that the writing and recording of a new album will become just as routine. And as a result of that, the need to turn out new product  within an acceptable timescale will be prioritised over the need to experiment musically. CIN doesn’t exactly sound like a band going through the motions, but there are times when it’s obvious that there’s a tried-and-tested formula to follow.

There’s a song that sounds a bit like Whats The Frequency Kenneth? (Alligator Aviator Autopilot  Antimatter) There’s one that sounds a bit like Everybody Hurts (Walk It Back). And there are a couple which, because of the use of arpeggiated strings and mandolins, sound quite a lot like Losing My Religion  You can’t blame them for this. Even the most ardent of experimenters and the hardiest of self-reinventors fall into some kind of routine. Even David Bowie, for whom every new album was an excuse to wear new skin, went through a few years of being crap (mainly because Bowie  was always a re-interpreter rather than an innovator, always taking extant styles and twisting them into something new, but he ran out of new things to be excited by, and ended up going all drum’n’bass just because it was, y’know… there).

As routines go, though, it’s a half-way decent  furrow. The song that sounds like both Everybody Hurts and Losing My Religion  (which is called Oh My Heart) is, yes, one of Michael Stipe’s muttery-vocal numbers. He’s been doing these since Murmur was released and possibly – this is purely my own supposition  - it’s a vocal affectation that was initially tried as a nervous, confidence-less experiment, was accepted and lauded, and so gained both momentum and life of its own to become Stipe’s signature style. Oh My Heart is not a bad example of it, though; it’s original in its unoriginality.

The two standout tracks are the ones that sound most like the REM of old. Mine Smell Like Honey is a not-quite thrash that channels  Near Wild Heaven and maybe Man On the Moon; and That Someone Is You is It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) after realising that jumping up and down, even for only a few minutes, isn’t something it can do anymore.  In the midst of its enthusiasm it namechecks both Young Marble Giants and ‘New Order covers’ which, given the proximity  to YMG, I take to mean Frente!’s version of Bizarre Love Triangle.

And that sums up Collapse Into Now. It’s music for people who danced (or rather swayed and stared at the floor) to Young Marble Giants and who originally preferred the New Order to the Frente! but have now changed their minds. It’s music for sitting back with a nice glass of red, or for the commute home when Radio Two’s playing Leona Lewis again. It’s for reminding yourself of yourself fifteen years ago. You remember, back then when albums like this, and bands like REM, were new and original and occasionally groundbreaking and, for a few glorious years, you hoped you were too.