Michael Stipe talks about REM's new album Accelerate, looks back at their 'working rehearsals' in Dublin and explains how their Irish-born producer helped them through their mid-life crisis.
R.E.M. have confirmed details of their new album, which was publicly rehearsed in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre last year and recorded in Westmeath’s Grouse Lodge Studios.
If REM apply the same print-and-be-damned attitude to the recording of these songs as they did to their live unveiling, they might produce their most vibrant record in years.
REM are urging fans not to purchase tickets for their Dublin Olympia gigs from unofficial outlets after 122 disappeared in transit between the UK and the venue box-office on Friday March 30.
In 2005, what is the point of REM? At times even they seem to be grasping for an answer.
For nearly a decade now, the music of Stipe, Buck and Mills has told a story of wavering attention spans. Over that period, fans have cheered rousing, reflective echoes of previous glories – ‘Leaving New York’ might be their best stab at an unapologetic anthem since the mid 1990s – yet endured reams of disinterested dross also.
Tonight, Stipe looks like The Riddler – pipe-cleaner thin, all legs and hips and frozen Ka-Pow poses; while around the eyes, a thick smudge of face paint completes the effect. For a forty-something, he sheds years like his lyric sheets.
They are one of the most interesting and enigmatic groups in rock. They are also one of the biggest, with a string of multi-million selling albums to their credit. But they don’t like interviews much, making themselves available for only a handful in Europe to coincide with the release of their new album Around The Sun. Once Peter Buck sits down opposite a microphone, however, a different face of REM reveals itself, as he talks eloquently about life, family, downloads, air rage, Iraq, Bush – and The Thrills.
from reagan to bush; from radio free europe to clear channel; from green to reveal; from the sfx to marlay park. REM call time out and Peter Buck fills in the gaps from 1983 to 2003. interview Peter Murphy
With 'Green' and its attendant world tour finally thrusting R.E.M. into the mainstream after seven years as the worst-kept secret in the Western hemisphere, it was odds-on that, given the band's predilection for avoiding the obvious, the follow-up would bear little relation to its illustrious predecessor, bar the songwriting credits.
Two weeks ago, Life’s Rich Pageant sounded to these ears like a formulated cop-out, an undignified retreat where previously REM had charged remorselessly forward.
With Fables of The Reconstruction R.E.M. find themselves thrust into the 'third album' dilemma - whether to persist with a distinctive sound, thereby risking being pigeonholed, or to make such a radical departure as to lose their initial following and gamble on finding a completely new audience.
"We didn't want it to be the same type of production, Reckoning is less of a mood record, more of a song record". Thus R.E.M. guitarist, Peter Buck on the reasoning behind Reckoning. For once, the pre-sell of the press-release contains the truth.
