Having gone through a fallow period for a few years, resulting in 2004’s sub-par album ‘Around The Sun’, R.E.M. refound their mojo with 2008’s blistering ‘Accelerate’. Three years on, they’ve returned with their fifteenth studio album. While there are some gems here – namely the raw ‘All The Best’ and the pleading ‘Oh My Heart’ – at this stage of their career, it’s difficult to listen to R.E.M. devoid of the context of their history and back catalogue. As an addition to that, ‘Collapse Into Now’ suffers somewhat. It’s good. But it’s no ‘Reckoning’. Or ‘Document’. Or ‘Automatic For The People’. Or…
6/10
Words by Mischa Pearlman
