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Mar 22, 2011What 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.
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May 24, 2011It's an assured effort from the very start.
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May 2, 2011Give Collapse a few listens. The potential is there.
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Mar 23, 2011Patti 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.
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Mar 21, 2011If 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.
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Mar 16, 2011With Collapse into Now, there's enough reason to keep celebrating.
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Mar 15, 2011What 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.
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Mar 10, 2011The 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.
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Mar 10, 2011Collapse Into Now isn't a bad album but crucially it isn't a classic.
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Mar 10, 2011Like 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.
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Mar 9, 2011The group have harked back to the more memorable songs in their canon, but this can be interpreted as largely derivative in some quarters.
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Mar 9, 2011It's another very good album from a band that's getting back into the habit of making them.
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Mar 9, 2011Despite some small stutter steps, Collapse Into Now is easily the best R.E.M. album since the trio lost its way.
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Mar 9, 2011Here, 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.
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Mar 9, 2011The most immediately striking moments on Collapse Into Now are those that sound like explicit retreads of previous R.E.M. songs.
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Mar 8, 2011All comparisons aside, Collapse Into Now is one heck of an album.
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Mar 8, 2011Collapse 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.
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Mar 8, 2011Collapse Into Now suffers somewhat. It's good. But it's no Reckoning. Or Document. Or Automatic For The People. Or...
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Mar 7, 2011Collapse 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.
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Mar 7, 2011R.E.M's 15th album could trade places with almost any of the previous 14.
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Mar 7, 2011Collapse 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.
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Mar 7, 2011Where 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.
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Mar 7, 2011This broadening of the palette is as deliberate as Accelerate's reduction of R.E.M. to ringing Rickenbackers, and while it occasionally feels as if the bandmembers sifted through their past to find appropriate blueprints for new songs, there is merit to their madness.
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Mar 7, 2011Although 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.
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Mar 7, 2011Considering 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.
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Mar 4, 2011Collapse mostly sounds like a familiar friend -- reliable in all the best ways, but still capable of quietly insinuating surprises.
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Mar 4, 2011Collapse into Now genuinely feels like their first post-Bill Berry album to resemble a four-legged dog. And that, folks, is an event.
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Mar 4, 2011On Collapse Into Now, they sound like they'd rather be a band than a legend, which must be why they keep pushing on.
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Mar 4, 2011Collapse Into Now isn't groundbreaking, but feeling comfortable in their old skin has produced REM's best effort in years.
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Mar 4, 2011Not 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.
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Mar 4, 2011Collapse is a genuine return to form for the band, blowing away anything else they've done for more than a decade.
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Mar 4, 2011Certainly, the recurrent themes of conclusion, starting over and rebuilding do lend it a muscular sense of purpose.
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Mar 4, 2011Late-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.
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Mar 4, 2011What 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.
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Q MagazineMay 2, 2011Unfortunately, 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]
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MojoApr 22, 2011Collapse Into now finds Stipe, Peter Buck and mike Mills pleading relevance and vitality. [Apr 2011, p.96]
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UncutMar 29, 2011Collapse 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]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 52 out of 61
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Mixed: 8 out of 61
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Negative: 1 out of 61
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Mar 8, 2011
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May 19, 2011
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Mar 16, 2011This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.