Although we usually give our knee jerk reactions to anticipated releases every Friday, there was no waiting ’til the end of the week to share first impressions of this one — particularly when we have a friend so highly qualified to offer insight. Help us welcome Drive XV essayist/Pop Songs 08 proprietor/R.E.M. master Matthew Perpetua as he evaluates the latest from our favorite Athenians…

Back when I interviewed R.E.M.’s Mike Mills for the Drive XV project, he mentioned that one of the objectives the band had going into their fourteenth studio album was to write shorter songs. Well, they succeeded: Half of the tracks on Accelerate clock in at under three minutes, and a quarter of them are just barely over the two minute mark. In total, Accelerate zooms on by in 34 minutes, making it the shortest full-length in the band’s discography, and nearly half the length of Around The Sun, Up, and New Adventures In Hi-Fi. Despite a few folky dirges on the second half, the cumulative effect of Accelerate is a bit like a roller coaster ride — you wait forever to get on it (it’s been four years since Around The Sun!), it’s a total rush in the moment, and when it’s over, it leaves you wanting to go back and do it again.

Brevity probably wasn’t the band’s only motive in writing Accelerate. Whereas most everything R.E.M. has done since the departure of original drummer/co-songwriter Bill Berry a decade ago has come off like either a formal experiment or an exercise in craft, they sound positively hungry on this record. It’s almost impossible not to hear Accelerate as an attempt to win back old fans and regain the critical respect they’ve lost in the past ten years. That said, the music doesn’t sound desperate, forced, or designed for maximum commercial impact, as with U2’s last two records. If anything, they sound pissed-off and eager to brawl.