R.E.M.
Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage

I'm not a big fan of greatest hits; usually, they're ways to scrape together some extra money when ideas are lacking.

Here, R.E.M. decide to release another best-of, also containing the most recent hits, which, however, marks the final point of their career. Essentially, we cannot claim that this is a ploy to try to bow out with a certain dignity, as many bands do, whose latest works leave much to be desired. In the end, both "Collapse Into Now" and especially "Accelerate" were good products; after thirty years of activity and more than a dozen albums (of varying quality), it's challenging to continue offering what R.E.M. have offered us in their final period.

"Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage" is a very rich best-of. Two discs and forty-one songs, including three unreleased tracks. In addition to the group's classics, from the very first "Radio Free Europe" and "Talk About The Passion" (from the excellent "Murmur" - 1983) to the more recent "Supernatural Superserious" and "Uberlin," we find, at the end of the track-list, three unreleased. They are certainly not masterpieces, but "Hallelujah" turns out to be, in the end, a decent career closure. 

The album contains the entire history of the group; there are also the darker moments: certainly "Up" from 1998 from which perhaps "Daysleeper" could have been chosen instead of "At My Most Beautiful" and particularly "Around The Sun," the 2004 album. But after this, the group managed to bounce back, both psychologically from the commercial failure of the album and qualitatively, putting together what would become "Accelerate."

"Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage," in short, is a more than decent way to end a career. The selection of tracks is, in the end, good. This way, a great career closes with dignity; and let's be honest, perhaps others who continue to fill store shelves without having more ideas should imitate R.E.M.