R.E.M.
Collapse Into Now

"Accelerate" served as a surprising warm-up for lazy critics who stopped at the refrains of those eleven brief apocalyptic songs that revisited past themes and chords with a fresh coat of paint. The naïve eyebrows raised while those in the know yawned and sang from exhaustion.

For this new work, a bit of that paint must have remained, but the game becomes even tenser and gloomier, and the trick is revealed once and for all. A masked album, full of citations, self-replicating, where R.E.M. return to themselves without any excuses. The sky tattooed with miracles wasn’t in the rearview mirror, the world wasn’t expecting revolutions or revelations, and it would gladly leave the movement to the eyes because one can travel comfortably even while standing still.

Yet. The previews hinted at a trumpeted return to form, the one heralded by the town criers with every new album release from Stipe and co. This time it was even the best album of the last 20 years. Better than "New Adventures in Hi-Fi"? Let's not kid ourselves. It’s actually just a summation of the last 20 years with Stipe being Stipe, a cultured poet who even quotes Quasimodo (in "All The Best"), Mike Mills returns to backing vocals, and Peter Buck abuses his guitar as Peter Buck would do. Even the guests have the parts they had in past albums, with Patti Smith cloning herself in "Blue", a concluding piece so similar to "E-Bow The Letter" it almost seems like a joke.

"Discoverer" breaks into the album with great rock and a Rubik's Cube of a text. "Uberlin" takes on the task of making us dance in the style of Michael Stipe, with the hand describing the words, a meta-song recalling "She Just Wants to Be" and "Drive". The following "Oh My Heart", complete with accordion, returns exactly to "Houston", although this time the imitation is an intentional continuation ("Hear the song, rearranged"), while "Everyday is Yours to Win", a slow almost passionate piece, reprises the "tick-tock" of "Drive". Eddie Vedder grumbles in "It Happened Today", but only after reading the credits, and the art of recycling stretches even over songs not particularly memorable like "Animal", here offered again under the title "Alligator_Aviator", a typical fast and muscular rock song that really wouldn’t lift an empty can. A slightly more effective trick in "Mine Smell Like Honey" withstands two listens without inducing train yawns. "Walk it Back" is notable for its sappy, yet miraculously not tired, flow and the best thing about "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I" is the title; otherwise, the song stands out for formal elegance that could grow with more listens. I've already mentioned "Blue".

An album that will turn out to be a masterpiece only to those who have only listened to an R.E.M. greatest hits (from Warner, though). The collapse in the title is what has happened to Stipe’s band, now honest craftsmen who always remake the same shoes. Some like them because they know they're comfortable, while others might have outgrown them.

The rating isn’t negative because there aren't any bad pieces and, once disappointment is set aside, what remains is an album with good melodies. Always the same ones, though.