Word: bandness
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...defining moment of Accelerate, and perhaps the defining moment of whatever R.E.M. goes on to become from here, takes place a few seconds into the fourth song, Hollow Man. At the band's peak, Stipe's lyrics conveyed emotions with an abstraction summed up in a line from Losing My Religion: "Oh no I've said too much." He chose his words carefully, out of a sense of privacy and poetic economy, and trusted that the tremors in his voice would convey the feelings. But the success of 1992's Everybody Hurts led to some bad habits; soon after...
...reasons for any great band's decline--and from 1983 to 1992 R.E.M. was one of the greatest, not only cranking out an unmatched series of jangly, literate records but also tracing a heroic arc from arty Athens, Ga., bar band to arena filler without any of the usual soul-selling--are not particularly surprising. Imagine if your livelihood depended on constantly being with, and agreeing with, your three best friends from college. It's enough to make a rock star want to become a farmer, which is exactly what drummer Bill Berry did when he retired from the band...
...their current trajectory puts expectations for R.E.M.'s 14th album, Accelerate, out April 1, at sneaker level, it's worth noting the band faced up to a few hard truths before getting into the studio last year. Given their ages (all three are nearing 50), the steep decline in their album sales and the fact that they don't particularly enjoy tarnishing their legacy with inferior records, they all agreed it was time to kill or cure: make a good album or call it a career...
...album never quite generates the moody atmospherics of their first 10; it's a little hard to lose yourself in something that doesn't pause long enough for you to get lost. But then, judging R.E.M. by the acoustics of their back catalog may no longer be fair. The band is finally headed in a new direction, and getting there fast...
...Army and that is the key distinction between this army and the army of the Vietnam War. But even as I ask for that understanding I'm almost certain that you won't be able to obtain it. Even Shakespeare, with his now overused notion of soldiers as a "band of brothers," fails to capture the bonds, the sense of responsibility to each other, among soldiers. In many ways, Iraq has become my home (by the time my deployment ends I will have spent more time here than anywhere else in the army) and the soldiers I share that home...