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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
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Accelerate
by R.E.M.
The rock band's 14th album is promised to be more rocking than its last release, Around the Sun.
| LABEL: |
Warner Bros. |
| RELEASE DATE: |
01 April 2008 |
| DISCS: |
1 disc |
| GENRE(S): |
Rock, Alternative |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
91
Entertainment Weekly
Heavyweight champeen or not, Stipe's got his fighting spirit back, and so does his band.
90
Spin
Accelerate will be rightfully championed as the defibrillator that shocked a once-great band back to its senses.
90
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.
83
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.
80
Hartford Courant
Accelerate serves notice that R.E.M. intends to stay that way.
80
Billboard
Accelerate may not stun on impact like some R.E.M. records, but it's still habit-forming.
80
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.
80
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.
80
Q Magazine
Redeemed, revived, irresisitable: it seems R.E.M. were only sleeping after all. [Apr 2008, p.99]
80
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]
80
Observer Music Monthly
It's mostly fast and unfussy, convincing and committed.
80
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.
80
Mojo
It really does seem that a decade-long period of interbal artistic crisis has been resolved, beautifully, even triumphantly. [Apr 2008, p.98]
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
80
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
70
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.
67
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.
67
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.
60
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.
60
Hot Press
Accelerate is patchy at best, with only the blaring finale, ‘I’m Gonna DJ’, really catching the attention.
60
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.
40
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.
The average user rating for this album is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 108 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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