Accelerate, released in 2008 through Warner (Bros.) Records, is the fourteenth studio album by American Alternative Rock band R.E.M.. Following the Troubled Production and Creator Backlash towards Around the Sun in 2004, the band felt pressured to come up with a follow-up that could reverse their decline, coming to the realization that their next album was the one that their careers hinged on: if it was another failure, it would inevitably be a Creator Killer.
Thus, seeking to get as far away from Around the Sun as they possibly could, the band recruited U2 collaborator Jacknife Lee and moved away from the electronic style of the Pat McCarthy-produced albums in favor of a Punk Rock-based direction that deliberately harked back to their influences. Revisiting the songwriting methods from their 80's material, the band used a five-night residency show in Dublin, Ireland to test the waters for the new songs they'd come up with, before putting together the new album at a breakneck pace over three three-week recording sessions, each in a different city, before spending just ten days mixing the results. According to R.E.M., it marked their fastest-made album in years, and it showed in the aggressive and fast-paced sound throughout its runtime.
Accelerate would mark a commercial comeback for R.E.M. as well following the dismal sales of Around the Sun, peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (albeit not selling as much as the pre-Around the Sun albums in the region) and topping the charts in the UK, the Belgian Ultratop Flanders chart, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Norway, and Switzerland. Billboard would later rank it as the 127th best-selling album of 2008, and it would be certified platinum in Norway and Switzerland in addition to gold in the UK, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Ireland. The comeback would ultimately be a short-lived one, with R.E.M. only putting out one more album, Collapse into Now, before amicably splitting up in 2011, but it definitely set the stage for them to end things off on a high note.
Accelerate was supported by four singles: "Supernatural Superserious", "Hollow Man", "Man-Sized Wreath", and "Until the Day Is Done". The small tour the band did to support the album, extending through North America, Europe, and Latin America, turned out to not only be the band's last tour, but also their final live performances ever, with R.E.M. choosing not to do any live performances to support Collapse into Now.
Tracklist:
- "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" (3:11)
- "Man-Sized Wreath" (2:32)
- "Supernatural Superserious" (3:23)
- "Hollow Man" (2:39)
- "Houston" (2:05)
- "Accelerate" (3:33)
- "Until the Day Is Done" (4:08)
- "Mr. Richards" (3:46)
- "Sing for the Submarine" (4:50)
- "Horse to Water" (2:18)
- "I'm Gonna DJ" (2:07)
Providence troped, facing the sun:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: "Horse to Water" features one line that reads "Friday night, fuck or fight, a pub crawl."
- Alliterative Title:
- "Supernatural Superserious"
- "Sing for the Submarine"
- Color Motif: White again, serving to highlight the contrast between this album and the one just before it. The cover art, disc label, and liner notes all prominently make use of white as a visual element.
- Concept Album: Michael Stipe described the album in a 2021 Stereogum interview as being based entirely around a "post-apocalyptic dreamscape" that had previously been visited in a number of earlier R.E.M. songs.
- Concept Video: The video for "Man-Sized Wreath" features an enigmatic figure being pursued by animated squares, playing a Pac Man Fever-type video game, and finally imitating the Tank Man
from the Tiananmen Square protests, with a limousine composed of the aforementioned squares replacing the tank. It's... odd. - Deliberately Monochrome: The album art is solely in stark black and white.
- Design Student's Orgasm: The album cover and liner notes feature an elaborate black and white cityscape, rich with detail.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The album called Accelerate is much more vigorous and aggressive than the slow-burning and downbeat Around the Sun.
- He's Back!: The album was intentionally written to invoke this trope, being a loud, energetic, and brash album that would stand as a contrast and bounce back from the burnout-heavy Around the Sun.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Averted again, with the double-12" release using standard number-based side labeling like Around the Sun.
- Incoming Ham: After the burnout-heavy Around the Sun, the band let everyone know they were back by opening Accelerate with "Living Well Is the Best Revenge", one of the most epically hammy rockers of their career:It's only when your poison spins into the life you'd hoped to live
That suddenly you wake up in a shaking panic... WOOOOOOOOWWWW! - Large Ham: Michael Stipe indulges in his most passionate vocal delivery up to this point throughout the album.
- Loudness War: The album clocks in at a paltry DR5, which granted fits the Punk Rock-driven direction of the album (similarly to the stylistic use of compression on Monster) but nonetheless can be fatiguing on the ears.
- Lyrical Cold Open: Michael Stipe's vocals on "Supernatural Superserious" kick in just a split-second before the instrumental.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Hollow Man", an upbeat-sounding rocker about, well, read the song title.
- Lyric Video: "Hollow Man", with the song lyrics appearing over abstract animation and live-action footage.
- Medium Blending: The music video for "Man-Sized Wreath" blends together live-action footage with 2D and 3D computer animation.
- Mood Whiplash: Compared to the slow dreariness of Around the Sun, the bombastic Punk Rock here can feel like a dropkick to the face for the unprepared.
- New Sound Album: After the sluggishly melancholic sound of Around the Sun and the electronic direction of the post-Berry era as a whole up to that point, Accelerate shifts to the exact opposite: loud, fast, in-your-face Punk Rock.
- No Ending: "I'm Gonna DJ", and by extent the album, abruptly ends with Michael Stipe curtly ending "yeah," with the instruments cutting out simultaneously, in lieu of a proper outro.
- Obligatory Bondage Song: "Supernatural Superserious" is an unusually happy and romantic variation on this theme.
- One-Man Song:
- "Hollow Man", a rare case of this kind of song referring to the narrator rather than the subject.
- "Mr. Richards", a.k.a. Dick Cheney.
- One-Word Title: Accelerate, "Houston"
- Performance Video: "Supernatural Superserious" intercuts footage of the band performing with shots of them traveling around a city.
- Production Throwback:
- "Sing for the Submarine" name-checks "Feeling Gravitys Pull", "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", and Around the Sun's "Electron Blue" and "High-Speed Train". The song also quotes phrases from "You Are the Everything", "World Leader Pretend", "Begin the Begin", "Beat a Drum", "I'll Take the Rain", and "Losing My Religion".
- The Title Track mentions a "cartoon escape hatch" in its chorus, nodding back to the use of "cartoon" as an arc word on Monster (itself a similarly loud and distorted-sounding album). The same song reprises melodic elements of the Monster track "Circus Envy", especially in the choruses.
- "Horse to Water" features the lines "Bantamweight with a mouth full of feathers/Don't you know that what comes around goes around," nodding back to the similar lines "I say that I'm a bantam lightweight/I say that I'm a phantom airplane/That never left the ground" in "Leave".
- Protest Song: "Houston" and "Mr. Richards", like "Final Straw" before it, are critiques of the George W. Bush administration. The latter song focuses its attention on Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, by then recognized as the real ringleader of the government in the 2000's.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- According to Michael Stipe, "Supernatural Superserious" was based on an event from his time volunteering as a summer camp counsellor, when his coworkers held a séance one night, leading him to make a journey of self-discovery through it.
- The Title Track can be interpreted as a direct allegory for the band's increasing feelings of ennui throughout the late 90's and early 2000's as a result of them grappling with Bill Berry's departure.
- Retraux:
- The loud, distorted Punk Rock sound on the album is a deliberate nod back to not only R.E.M.'s punk roots, but also the art punk sound of the band's influences, primarily Television and Patti Smith.
- Some portions of the "Man-Sized Wreath" are animated in 2D pixel art with an intentional "old arcade game" aesthetic.
- Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: The album is much more energetic and upbeat-sounding than Around the Sun, with this sense of renewed vigor similarly carrying over to the lyrics.
- Self-Deprecation: At one point in "Man-Sized Wreath", Michael Stipe states that "well I'm not deceived by pomp and odious conceit," jabbing at his own opaque political commentary throughout Around the Sun.
- Shout-Out:
- "Living Well is the Best Revenge" is titled after a quote from English clergyman and metaphysical poet George Herbert.
- "Houston" was written as a direct nod to "Galveston" by Jimmy Webb, namechecking the song in its own lyrics.
- "Sing for the Submarine" mentions "Tyrell and his mechanical owl."
- Stealth Pun: "Mr. Richards". What's another name for Richard? Dick.
- Success as Revenge: "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" revolves around the narrator facing an onslaught of insults, attacks, and other vitriol and brushing them all off in favor of simply living life to the fullest. According to Michael Stipe, the song was penned as a Take That! to both right-wing pundit Bill O'Reilly and an unnamed person he admired who badmouthed the band, summarizing the song as "fuck you! Sing like this, you talented fuck."
- Take That!: As Stipe noted in the liner notes for Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage, an unnamed person whom Stipe had long admired ended up firing one of these at R.E.M. themselves, and an incensed Stipe wrote "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" as his response.
- Title Track: This album and its predecessor are the only two records in R.E.M.'s discography to have a straightforward example of one.
