Collapse into Now

The most immediately striking moments on Collapse Into Now are those that sound like explicit retreads of previous R.E.M. songs.

Collapse Into Now can only sound like an afterthought, but it nevertheless one which bristles and fizzes with invigorating qualities of wit and fury. [Apr 2011, p.76]

Although Collapse into Now is ultimately an OK rock record, one can point to moments here or on the album before that demonstrate that today's R.E.M. can achieve better if it buckles down hard enough.

Collapse Into now finds Stipe, Peter Buck and mike Mills pleading relevance and vitality. [Apr 2011, p.96]

Unfortunately, Collapse Into Now is not nearly as consistent, vital or accomplished as either Out Of Time or Automatic For The People. [Apr 2011, p.94]

On Collapse Into Now, they sound like they'd rather be a band than a legend, which must be why they keep pushing on.

Collapse Into Now is a fine album, and one that's far better than any band together for three decades has any right to be. What a pity, then, that they're not going to tour it.

Here, the 51-year-old is comfortable in his role as an elder statesman, as are guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills on their most self-aware record since the departure of drummer Bill Berry in 1998.

Collapse Into Now isn't groundbreaking, but feeling comfortable in their old skin has produced REM's best effort in years.

Like all of R.E.M.'s most recent albums, Collapse Into Now is flawed; a reflection, I'm speculating, on the fact that that band's working process is now flawed.

It's another very good album from a band that's getting back into the habit of making them.

Collapse mostly sounds like a familiar friend -- reliable in all the best ways, but still capable of quietly insinuating surprises.

Collapse shuffles through all of R.E.M.'s past lives; it's a greatest hits without a hit, a career retrospective with all new material.

All comparisons aside, Collapse Into Now is one heck of an album.

Collapse Into Now suffers somewhat. It's good. But it's no Reckoning. Or Document. Or Automatic For The People. Or...

Late-period R.E.M. often lacks the fire and finesse of their college-rock classics, but Collapse Into Now's sharp power-pop blasts get it half right.

Considering how the album's style draws from each era of R.E.M.'s evolution, Collapse Into Now plays as something of a greatest-hits package.

Collapse is a genuine return to form for the band, blowing away anything else they've done for more than a decade.

The album clearly bounces back and forth between those moments of emotional annihilation and utter hope and optimism. But more than that, with those tracks book-ending the effort, the record's most basic motif is clear: even as lords of rock, the men of R.E.M. still struggle daily with their own issues and the standards of the world, but welcome the battle with ever-glowing smiles.

The group have harked back to the more memorable songs in their canon, but this can be interpreted as largely derivative in some quarters.

Certainly, the recurrent themes of conclusion, starting over and rebuilding do lend it a muscular sense of purpose.

Collapse Into Now builds on Accelerate for something less primal, but much more insightful, varied, and, frankly, pleasurable. It's hard to remember the last time R.E.M. seemed so at ease and yet still so vital.

Where the spirit-void blankness of R.E.M. once felt intuitive and intentional, it now feels accidental. Most of this record's musical temperament seems reheated or purchased.

Collapse into Now genuinely feels like their first post-Bill Berry album to resemble a four-legged dog. And that, folks, is an event.

Give Collapse a few listens. The potential is there.

Despite some small stutter steps, Collapse Into Now is easily the best R.E.M. album since the trio lost its way.

If there's any band that's completely earned the right to gracefully knock themselves off, it's R.E.M. It only took them fourteen years.

What makes Collapse Into Now so satisfying is that it isn't a return to form so much as a realization that the band R.E.M. are now isn't necessarily a bad thing to be.

Collapse Into Now isn't a bad album but crucially it isn't a classic.

Not as cohesive as their very best work, R.E.M.'s 15th album is still as smart, sonically rich and emotionally resonant as a guitar band can ever hope to be.

With Collapse into Now, there's enough reason to keep celebrating.

Patti Smith, Eddie Vedder, Peaches and Lenny Kaye are along for the ride, helping Collapse Into Now stand tall in R.E.M.'s richly diverse canon.

R.E.M's 15th album could trade places with almost any of the previous 14.

What makes this record better than Accelerate is the feeling that R.E.M. have figured out how to be R.E.M. again--how to affect the signature balance of folky and punky that's inspired bands far less worshipful than Pearl Jam or the Decemberists.

What better band to cover R.E.M. than R.E.M.? That's exactly what the longtime Athens, Ga., trio sounds like it's doing on its 15th studio album, Collapse Into Now.