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Accelerate
by R.E.M.

R.E.M. reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 79 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.4 out of 10
based on 33 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 107 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album

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

What The Critics Said

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.
Read Full Review
90
Spin
Accelerate will be rightfully championed as the defibrillator that shocked a once-great band back to its senses.
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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.
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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.
Read Full Review
80
Hartford Courant
Accelerate serves notice that R.E.M. intends to stay that way.
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80
Billboard
Accelerate may not stun on impact like some R.E.M. records, but it's still habit-forming.
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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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Read Full Review
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Read Full Review
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.
Read Full Review
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Read Full Review
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Read Full Review
60
Hot Press
Accelerate is patchy at best, with only the blaring finale, ‘I’m Gonna DJ’, really catching the attention.
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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.
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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.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now! The average user rating for this album is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 107 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[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.

Steve O gave it a4:
When I found out Stippe was gay, it kinda ruined the whole R.E.M. thing for me.

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