Michael Stipe, lead vocalist and auteur of R.E.M., is unquestionably the oddest contradictory queer rockstar on the planet. Never one to wave a rainbow flag (he reluctantly came out after his bust-up with Natalie Merchant outed him in ’95), Stipe has always maintained that it’s his business and not yours and, besides, he had other things on his mind. None of this has stopped the band from evolving from critical darlings to an arena-filling supergroup. Though R.E.M. (with co-bandmates Peter Buck and Mike Mills) is probably one of the most literate, political, intimate and loved bands in the world, Stipe has developed a subdued but colorful (‘eccentric’ rather than ‘gay’) profile that has never unbalanced the band’s credibility. (Think of Stipe in the cover story in Out Magazine with him innocently sucking his thumb or his involvement with queer happy movies like Velvet Goldmine and Being John Malkovich.) For all of Stipe’s showmanship, R.E.M. has always been about the music and never the celebrity—which is why it has never been ‘just that rock band from Athens, Ga.’
The new Warner Brothers album, Accelerate, is being heralded as a step back in the right direction after the dull Around the Sun (an underseller even unloved by the band) and, unsurprisingly, it’s a blunt comment on the sorry state of the union and our current president. For all the hooks and clamor of the disc, this version of R.E.M. has an exhausted anger to them—times are bad, really bad. Well, no shit.
Most of R.E.M.’s radio staples captured the essence of the times (‘Everybody Hurts,’ ‘Losing My Religion’ and even ‘Man in the Moon’ sounded like theme music for an epic on protracted loss and regret, be it AIDS or the snipping of human rights] and Accelerate is no different. But where ’95’s Monster was a jangled, knarled angry revolt with shrieking feedback shot through it (aimed at the nosy press), Accelerate zooms along at a buffered radio-friendly velocity that puts the lyrics front and center. Stipe snaps, ‘I could have kept my head down, I might have kept my mouth shut…/You lead a horse to water and watch him drown…’on ‘Horse to Water’ near the end of the disc but, by then, the gig is up. Slinging muck back at the White House these days is hardly revolutionary, but Accelerate is looking deeper and deeper into our collective mire. And that’s the beauty of this recording—specifically, at this time. R.E.M. has let us know that ‘the END’ isn’t coming—we’re passed that and in free fall … everyone of us.
Not that Accelerate is a downer; far from it. And the Fri., June 6, show at the United Center, with Stipe dressed in corporate drag (a charcoal pinstriped suit and tie—obviously, the man is telling us something we need to hear again and again), was more of a celebration rather than a history lesson. For this tour, the band is raiding its 14 albums and 25-year history, which has its own irony. When R.E.M. first broke out we were trapped in ‘Reagan Hell,’ which is, sad to say, where we are now. Accelerate, R.E.M. and, particularly, Stipe aren’t so much relighting the fires of the ‘good fight’ or inciting revolution, but are taking us in a clear direction toward what we need to do for survival—and, this time, without a mandolin in sight.