Accelerate

Certain Songs #1763: R.E.M. – “Horse to Water”

February 29, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Accelerate
Year: 2008

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File Under Easy

For Accelerate, R.E.M. had changed producers yet again, replacing Pat McCarthy, who’d come aboard during Up, with Jacknife Lee, an Irish producer who’d worked with artists like Snow Patrol, Bloc Party and U2. And indeed, it was the Edge who recommended Lee, who helped R.E.M. the album short, sharp and focused as fuck. It had been two decades since they’d worked so fast.

And so my favorite song on Accelerate was the penultimate track, “Horse to Water,” which starts off with a massive Bill Reiflin drumbeat and Michael Stipe singing over clanking guitar noises.

Certain Songs #1762: R.E.M. – “Supernatural Superserious”

February 28, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Accelerate
Year: 2008

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File Under Humiliation

One of the cool things about Accelerate was after years of rejecting “sounding like R.E.M.” they fully embraced it. And why not? They’d created a wonderful, unique sound, and by 2008, it wasn’t like a whole lot of other bands were using it all that much.

That said, it sounded so much like an R.E.M. song that I didn’t trust it all that much at first. It’s only been over the years that I’ve come to appreciate how great it truly is.

Certain Songs #1761: R.E.M. – “Living Well is The Best Revenge”

February 27, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Accelerate
Year: 2008

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File Under Apostles

One of my all time favorite critical one-liners is Rob Sheffield’s quip that Oasis’ Be Here Now was a concept album about long all the songs were. And so while I’m temped to joke that Accelerate was a concept album about how fast all of the songs were, it’s really the album where they finally got over Bill Berry leaving the band.

Having started out defining themselves as a rock ‘n’ roll band, a state of affairs under which you often live and die based upon your drummer, they spent the decade after Berry left kind of avoiding just rocking the fuck out. At least on the studio albums. To diminishing results. And so with drummer Bill Reiflin and second guitarist (and more) Scott McCaughey onboard as near-equals, they decided to rock the fuck out.