52 in 52: Week 4 - "Collapse Into Now"

Week of 11/2/14 - 11/8/14

Album from 2011

There was a bunch of stuff I thought about writing about this week, but I'm still somewhat limited by the fact that 2011 is still relatively recent, and anything from that year is going to be somewhat pricey, and there aren't going to be as many in actual stores. If I'm going to spend more than $15 on a record, I'm going to do it for one that I actually want to own.

So I made a list of albums from 2011 that I would both like to own and would like to write about: "Thank You, Happy Birthday" by Cage the Elephant, "Augustana" by Augustana, "Wasting Light" by Foo Fighters, "Collapse Into Now" by REM "Yes and Also Yes" by Mike Doughty, "The Whole Love" by Wilco, and "Birdy" by Birdy.

Of the two that I was able to find actual copies of, "Collapse Into Now" was much cheaper than "The Whole Love" (which was over $25), so this week I'm going to write about the last REM record.


It's one that I see as a very successful album for what it is.

In a lot of ways I see REM as very conscious of their career and their legacy. A couple of years ago Quentin Tarantino was talking about directors careers and about how after a certain point their not the same. He's very conscious of his legacy, and was talking about how even if you put out a couple of duds you can come back from that, plenty of the greats (both directors and bands) do eventually return with strong performances, but it'll never be the same as when they were on a scoreless streak.

With music it's a little bit different because careers can last much longer and an album doesn't necessarily take as much time as it does to make a movie. REMs 15 albums, to me, seem like the perfect amount. There's not too much where it's sort of daunting for new fans and casual fans to learn and become acquainted with all of it, but there's enough to keep them busy. WIth some people like Elvis Costello or Van Morrison, both of whom I absolutely love and admire and love their music, there's just so much of it. Over 30 albums is daunting, and it's so hard to know what you're going to connect with.

Maybe this album only seems so assured and legacy-solidifying in hindsight, because I seem to recall people talking about a creative renaissance for the band, with "Accelerate" in 2008 being a big comeback, and then "Collapse Into Now" proving that it wasn't a late-career fluke. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield even said, "they sound like they'd rather be a band than a legend, which must be why they keep pushing on."

The album has some all-timers to add to the REM catalog, including "Uberlin," "Mine Smell Like Honey," "Oh My Heart," and "Blue," and it runs the gamut of REM songs, from slow-burning dormancy to dreamy poetry to angry rockers. The combination of songs here find themselves smack dab between REM's two most popular (and two of their top 5) albums, "Out of Time," with its jangliness, its Van Morrison guitars, its pop spurts and happy lyric sputters, and "Automatic for the People," with its cold meditation, its death and longing, its piano, its haunting vocals. That's not to say that "Collapse Into Now" is as good as either of those albums, but its not as far away as you'd think. It's a classic REM album that is labeled as that not simply because it was a solid way to end, or it wasn't a disastrous end, but because it's actually a classic REM album.

Of course, it does have its moments of "Last REM Album" that stand out, as well. There's practically all of "All the Best," but I'lll just rip a few of the choice lyrics here:

"I think I'll sing and rhyme/I'll give it one more time/I'll show the kids how to do it/fine, fine, fine,"

and "You tell me which part of my story, baby, stuck,"

and "It's just like me to overstay my welcome bless."

Then there's the simplicity of "It Happened Today," with the song mostly telling us what it is not ("not a parable," "We'll leave the allegory to another Bible story,") and exclaiming pride at the now, ignoring the past. It's songs like this, where Stipe happily tells us that we're going to "close in on a promise, after all I've done today, I have earned my voice," and then yelling that "it happened today, hooray!" that make me think that the guys were really looking forward to retirement, looking forward to what was going to happen next. They were really in the moment, in the present, consistently proclaiming the power of today, of now, as the rest of their career collapses into this moment, collapses into now.

And then there's the album's final song, "Blue." I think that it's the best song, though I could definitely see arguments for others, like "Uberlin." It's a great, weird song that is made even greater and less weird (or maybe more, I'm not sure) by the fact that it's the very last song on the very last album of their career, one that they knew was going to be their last.

It's an eery sounding song, with Stipe's vocals, sounding blurry at times, and almost spoken-word, backed by a moaning and screaming Patti Smith. It tells a disconnected story about a Halloween party, a party-goer whose still awake at 4 AM, but drunk and sleepless enough to be having some sort of odd honesty to his language as he describes the scenes around him, with his "fellow riders in half costume, half asleep." (Totally not important, but I always imagine that scene in "In Bruges" when he's not of a clear mind and he stumbles through the fog and into a movie set, where every is dressed up in weird costumes as they're shooting some sort of dream sequence.) Stipe continues praising the now, while reconciling his current complacency in the band with his love for his fans, the pieces of the country that have accepted him:

"I like you, I love you, every coast of you,
I've seen your eddies and tides and hurricanes and cyclones."

Then his drunken, ranting, stream-of-consciousness poetry becomes more and more poignant and relevant, as he says, "I want Whitman proud. Patti Lee proud. My brothers proud. My sisters proud. I want me. I want it all. I want sensational. Irresistible. This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive."

It's almost an ironic sentiment to be echoed so often on a goodbye album. They're constantly reiterating how important today is in their lives, how much they're looking forward, looking ahead, forgetting the past, and its the final thing they're ever going to say.

The first side of the album is less full of weird/wonderful stuff like this, these almost nonsensical things that make up the back side (even just the titles: "Mine Smell Like Honey," "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter," "Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I"), as it's more straight-away, beautiful songs like the exuberance of Stipe's vocals in the album's opener, "Discoverer," the simple happiness of "It Happened Today," the coherence of "Uberlin," the loveliness of "Oh My Heart." It's almost like different stages of saying goodbye. The first six songs, the ones on the front of the album, here titled the X-Axis, are happy and vivacious. They're more sweet than bitter.

The back half is a little bit more complicated. They're less straightforward, and for the most part, a lot harder to figure out. I've listened to this album enough to know the songs before I had bought the vinyl this week, but it wasn't until now that I listened with an ear towards understanding, and for a song like "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter," I don't know if I'll ever commit the time or have the patience to know what the hell Stipe is talking about throughout this song. Or even in a song like "That Someone is You," where he suddenly begins spitting out random words: "with the fury lock of Sharon Stone Casino, Scarface Al Pacino, '74 Torino." It's almost more confounding, more complicated, more bitter than sweet.

The first half is like a simple goodbye, before things get messy. And then, of course, they get messy.

I don't know what it is about retirement that the boys in REM were so looking forward to. Perhaps it was just breaking free of the constraints of being REM. Perhaps it was just to be able to relax and do nothing. Peter Buck and Mike Mills have been performing and releasing music with Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn, and Linda Pitmon as The Baseball Project, an awesome little project that writes songs about baseball. The songs mostly insider references, and serve as a great example of what baseball is all about, which is that there's way more to the story of the game than just the people who are the best, or the team that wins the most games. Buck has also released two solo albums, of which I have not listened to at all. Apparently Michael Stipe and Courtney Love released a song last year called "Rio Grande." I don't really know anything else about that. Shortly after the retirement, the band released a mammoth, career-spanning compilation called "Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage," with 36 songs from their fifteen full-length albums (including three from "Collaps Into Now"), one song from their debut EP, and three brand new songs, "A Month of Saturdays," "We All Go Back to Where We Belong," and "Hallelujah."

I know that all sounds like a lot, but the guys have actually been pretty quiet in the three years. Stipe seems to be fully retired. Mills and Buck are sort of doing their own music thing on totally their own time and terms, and Bill Berry, who actually left the band in 1997, is a farmer, I think? I don't really know, but he also has been pretty out-of-the-eye since his retirement.

Last Week's: Some Nights by fun.