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Entertainment Weekly

Heavyweight champeen or not, Stipe's got his fighting spirit back, and so does his band.

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Spin

Accelerate will be rightfully championed as the defibrillator that shocked a once-great band back to its senses.

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Delusions of Adequacy

With the rocking tunes, energetic vocals and those smart lyrics, Accelerate is a true return to form for a band that really needed it.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

With Accelerate, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills sound like a band again, albeit now one not afraid to look back a little.

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Hartford Courant

Accelerate serves notice that R.E.M. intends to stay that way.

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Billboard

Accelerate may not stun on impact like some R.E.M. records, but it's still habit-forming.

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Drowned In Sound

Now we have Accelerate; the actualisation of a new found urgency. Gratifyingly short at under 35 minutes, it’s a summation of much that is or was great about R.EM.: wordy proclamations by Stipe, ringing Rickenbacker trills by Buck and lush backing vocals by Mills.

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cokemachineglow

It’s simply R.E.M. finally making a concerted effort to sound like themselves, and realizing that’s not such a horrible idea.

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Q Magazine

Redeemed, revived, irresisitable: it seems R.E.M. were only sleeping after all. [Apr 2008, p.99]

Under The Radar

It is the sound of a classic band moving forward, and it is a step in the right direction. [Sping 2008, p.80]

Observer Music Monthly

It's mostly fast and unfussy, convincing and committed.

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Amazon.com

Accelerate puts the 2007 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame group once again firmly behind the wheel of alternative rock, a genre R.E.M. helped invent.

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Mojo

It really does seem that a decade-long period of interbal artistic crisis has been resolved, beautifully, even triumphantly. [Apr 2008, p.98]

Rolling Stone

Accelerate is the first studio album by that post-Berry stage band, and it is one of the best records R.E.M. have ever made.

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The Guardian

Accelerate isn't quite as irresistible as some people might have you believe, but you can't help feeling glad they stuck around to make it.

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All Music Guide

As comebacks go, that's relatively modest, but the very modesty of Accelerate is what makes it such a successful rebirth as R.E.M. no longer denies what they were or what they are, and, in doing so, they offer a glimpse of what they could be once again.

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New Musical Express

Accelerate is by some considerable distance REM’s best and most cohesive album since Berry left, and crucially echoes a time when they made their best music, if not necessarily their biggest-selling.

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musicOMH.com

On Accelerate R.E.M. sound like men less than half their age, ripping through 11 songs in a mere 35 minutes that contains great chunks of just about everything that made them the biggest band in world back in the 1990s.

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New York Magazine

When in doubt, crank the amps. This is the philosophy behind R.E.M.’s new album, Accelerate, their best, and certainly their loudest, in years.

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PopMatters

Accelerate hits the ground running, slows down briefly, and ends as furiously as it began. Mapped out that way, its most striking moments end up being the bookends of the first and last two songs, particularly since the album is so short, but even the weakest moments in the middle detract little from the whole.

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Slant Magazine

If it isn't able to recapture the post-punk energy of "Reckoning," the political fury of "Life's Rich Pageant," or the epic scope of "Automatic for the People," the album, at the very least, finds the band playing to its strengths rather than attempting to explore an increasingly thin artistic mythology. That alone justifies Accelerate's positive buzz, even if the album doesn't quite support the magnitude of it.

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Sputnikmusic

Accelerate’s songs are generally well-constructed, almost to the point of being formulaic- eleven alternative pop songs with no excess fat around the edges.

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Paste Magazine

There’s good rock ’n’ roll here, and it’s vital and raw enough to be memorable. But there’s something calculated too, something demographically researched and meticulously executed in these songs.

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No Ripcord

this is a rock album, R.E.M are back being literate and smart, Stipe is barking out lyrics like it’s 1987… in fact, beef up some songs off "Document" and you could mix the two albums up.

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Dot Music

"Accelerate" pushes along with urgency but a lack of bite - like background music to a bar scene in an indie thriller. "Horse To Water", however, has the machine-gun fast delivery of "It's The End Of The World…" and a cart-wheeling chorus redolent of old times.

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Blender

Their 14th studio album is a fierce nostalgiafest full of cascading jangle, candied power chords, lonesome harmonies, Southern-gothic protest poetry and roundhouse drum bash.

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Village Voice

'Sing for the Submarine's' winking nods to old song titles ("electron blue," "gravity's pull," "high-speed train") are painfully self-aware. It's a sharp contrast to the rest of Accelerate, on which R.E.M. stop overthinking things--and start roaring toward the future.

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Austin Chronicle

As 34 minutes advance, songs get longer and less interesting ('Sing for the Submarine'), but "Horse to Water" stomps, and 'I'm Gonna DJ' ("at the end of the world") doesn't decelerate.

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Pitchfork

Accelerate's broad strokes, big riffs, and beefy production (the album was reportedly recorded in "just" nine weeks) are admirable, as is the disc's concision, but its success is still more as a step forward than a slam dunk.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

R.E.M. do sound like a band again, but they don’t sound like a band very much apart from their peers.

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Hot Press

Accelerate is patchy at best, with only the blaring finale, ‘I’m Gonna DJ’, really catching the attention.

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Uncut

Accelerate is a simple, pragmatic record built on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, even the best bands have to retrace their steps, if only to remind themselves what they're really good at.

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NOW Magazine

There are a few jangly throwbacks for nostalgia’s sake interspersed throughout Accelerate, but they’re overshadowed by blustery guitar blather that shouts “anachronism” at every turn.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 109 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Francesco M gave it a9:
Music magazines are publishing these days the lists of the 2008 top albums. Accelerate seems to appear only in the Q top 50 at number 36... But are they kidding? I know R.E.M. are not relevant anymore for the public, they are nowadays nearly out of the mainstream circuit, the album sold less than the worst expectations and even the tour hasn't been as succesful as the previous tour... But I think those critics who compile these lists are anyway kidding!!! They only have to judge the best albums and they haven't to care about the popularity of them! 25years ago someone had the courage to put an album that sold at the time 300k copies at the top of a list which included in the 2nd place an album that sold 55M of copies. The first album is still in 2008 one of the most relevant album in the history of music, the second is only history (a legend in terms of numbers, but only history in terms of music). Accelerate couldn't absolutely be compared to Murmur, because compared to murmur the lack of creativity is too much evident. But compared to Murmur, what album recorded since 1983 to nowadays doesn't show a lack of creativity? Accelerete is simply the perfect alternative rock album You could listen in 2008! To put other alternative rock albums before accelerate in these lists is simply an insult to R.E.M., to the genre of music they have always refined in the course of their career and to history of music! Anyway this lists are not so surprising if We consider that the majority of critics prefear Monster compared to Accelerate. Please change Job! Listen to music and Judge It seems to difficult for You! According to Peter Buck, Monster was made by the scraps of AFTP remixed with catchy grunge (R.E.M. grunge not Seattle grunge) distortions... Accelerate is made by nearly perfect alternative songs like for example Supernatural Supersserious, the title song or Sing For The Submarine. And the average level is so good that when you listen to the CD You never want to skip a song! There is even someone who consider this album a bad one because the previous three were boring or because they don't accept the sexual preferences of Michael Stipe... How sad is the fact that these persons have the right to write their opinion somewhere! PLEASE LISTEN 3 CONSECUTIVE TIMES TO IT THAN JUDGE AN WRITE YOUR OPINION SOMEWHERE!!! The world doesn't need and doesn't deserve stupid prejudices! In every field of life.

[Anonymous] gave it a10:
R.E.M. back in top form, one of the best albums they've made... proving why they are one of the greatest bands ever!!!

B M. gave it a7:
R.E.M. rock out harder than they have since the departure of Bill Berry. That's good. The songwriting sometimes takes a backseat to the band's rediscovered rock chops. That's not so good. Overall the album is good, but you can feel the band trying too hard to be relevant again.

Michael H. gave it a10:
Greatest Band in the world!!!!!

DJ W. gave it a9:
Sure, the album rocks and has a sense of urgency. Then, all of a sudden, Hollow Man appears and you feel that Stipe has found a lyrical melody that is instantly classic. Buck and Mills are always more than adequate when they stop trying to be like The Beach Boys (see Reveal and Around the Sun.) And you have to admit, having a career in rock isn't always easy to do, especially these days when our attention spans are shorter than the time it takes to change the channel on your remote. Accelerate, not unlike Reckoning, makes its point then leaves. And the listener is grateful for the impact and refreshed when they "return to form" because their "form" is always better than most.

Dan G. gave it a3:
I'm clearly in the minority here but make no apologies for what I'm about to write. It seems that almost everybody has been pulled in by the hype for this album, as it is mediocre at best. The recording level has been set so high that the whole thing just becomes a blur. What happened to the tunes and the subtlety that used to be REM? Accelerate is an album not without some merit - there are some good moments - but is this all they can come up with after 4 years of studio inactivity? By comparison, Around The Sun, is vastly superior, and I think history will judge that to be the case in years to come.

T S gave it an8:
This is no question a very good album and I'm enjoying it more with every listen. So much better than their last three discs it's shocking. Also less indulgent than many of their classic Bill Berry albums.

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