SXSW: R.E.M Step on the Gas, Van Morrison Keeps It Simple
In an interview earlier this year, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck promised me that the band would try to play every song from their new studio album in concert. They did better than try, in their headlining set at Stubb’s BBQ on the opening night of SXSW. R.E.M. played all but one of the eleven tracks on Accelerate, and they plunged into each song, especially the fast ones, with a joyful fury. In the very first number, “Living Well Is the Best Revenge,” singer Michael Stipe turned his breathless chanting on the record into a manic harangue, like a preacher about to explode in his pulpit. During “Man-Sized Wreath” Stipe made a wreath over his head with his arms as Buck and guitarist Scott McCaughey fired cannonball power chords and McCaughey and bassist Mike Mills sang high harmonies like mocking angels. And in “Hollow Man,” its quiet deceptive start blew up into an impassioned chorus, with Buck executing his old Pete Townshend-like leaps. The other half of the twenty-three-song show ran almost the entire R.E.M. timeline, going back to “Second Guessing” from 1984’s Reckoning but not avoiding highpoints of the recent, “troubled” years such as “Imitation of Life” as the band fought to find a new equilibrium after the departure in 1997 of original drummer Bill Berry. “Auctioneer (Another Engine),” from 1985’s Fables of the Reconstruction, was as concise and dynamic as the new album’s title track, and you could hear the strands of jangle and faith connecting the decades, from “Fall on Me” to “Walk Unafraid” and, in the final encore, “Man on the Moon.” But the R.E.M. on Accelerate is explicit about the national distress. Stipe, in a talkative mood, described how the new album’s “Houston” was his reaction to former First Lady Barbara Bush’s small-minded comments about the Texas invasion of Katrina exiles in 2
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Published: 2008-03-13
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News, SXSW
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