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When R.E.M. finished recording its 15th studio album in Nashville last year, guitarist and founding member Peter Buck continued an annual ritual.
Instead of flying home to the Pacific Northwest, he drove from Tennessee to Portland, Ore., passing through Utah on the way. The Beehive State boasts "one of the best drives on Earth," he said in an interview.
On the drive, he listened to the just-completed album, "Collapse Into Now," over and over again.
"I've always known how good or bad our albums are," he said. "We've done records I've been dissatisfied with."
Buck paused before adding a comment that will sound like music to the ears of R.E.M, fans everywhere: "This felt like a pretty good album."
Buck, singer Michael Stipe and bassist and keyboardist Mike Mills will release "Collapse Into Now" on Tuesday. The new album is another step forward for the iconic rock band that began in 1980 in Athens, Ga., when Stipe met Buck in the record store where the latter worked. Friends from the University of Georgia, Mills and drummer Bill Berry, joined the duo shortly thereafter.
To many casual listeners, R.E.M. has experienced declining fortunes ever since Berry amicably departed the band in 1997. Without a drummer, the band felt free to experiment with its sound, which before had always blended acoustic and electric guitars in a mix that helped define the term "college rock" in the 1980s.
The band released "Up" in 1998, "Reveal" in 2001 and then "Around the Sun," which didn't even reach gold-certification status, in 2004. It was a steep fall from the highs of "Out of Time," "Automatic for the People" and "Monster," which all went quadruple platinum in the early 1990s.
The band had lost its way, some believed, as the poor-selling albums after Berry's exit in some ways mirrored the artistic decline that critics wrote about. That's despite singles such as "Imitation of Life" and "At My Most Beautiful" that were among the most beautiful slices of pop heaven the band had ever released.
Critics had written off R.E.M., claiming the band had become irrelevant, an inconceivable notion for the musicians who had once tapped the zeitgeist with "Losing My Religion," "Man on the Moon" and "It's the End of the World as We Know It."
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, came 2008's "Accelerate." " 'Accelerate' was a step in the right direction," Buck said.
The fuzzy guitar intro of that album's first, infectious single, "Supernatural Superserious," signaled the high energy of albums such as "Monster" was back, as loud guitars reigned again and the midtempo wilderness that marred its previous albums had been hacked through.
A sign of the new times was that "Supernatural Superserious" was used by ESPN as part of coverage of Major League Baseball's 2008 Opening Day.
When R.E.M. regrouped in 2010 after a world tour, musicians felt a renewed focus sparked by the positive reaction to "Accelerate." "We knew we had another great album in us," Buck said.
The upbeat music and penetrating lyrics of "Collapse Into Now" are more personal than political, Buck said. "It certainly feels like there are characters working their way through things," he said. "I feel it's an uplifting album."
But with the firebrand Stipe, don't expect an album devoid of commentary on current events. One of its strongest songs is "Oh My Heart," another great single in the R.E.M. tradition.
It's a return to the subject of Hurricane Katrina, which the band addressed on the song "Houston" on "Accelerate." "Oh My Heart," with stirring backing baritone vocals from Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, speaks to the continuing struggle of New Orleans, one of three cities where R.E.M. recorded the new album.
Storm didn't kill me
The government changed
Hear the answer call
Hear the song rearranged
Hear the trees, the ghosts and the buildings sing
With the wisdom to reconcile this thing
It's sweet and it's sad and it's true
How it doesn't look bitter on you
Oh my heart
The band doesn't plan to tour behind "Collapse Into Now," after its large tour promoting "Accelerate." "I don't think we've made a decision," Buck said, though other members of the band have revealed in other interviews that a tour is unlikely.
That's OK. On Tuesday, March 8, "Collapse Into Now" will be playing in cars throughout Utah, and what great drives those will be.
'Collapse
Into Now'
R.E.M.'s new album will be released Tuesday, March 8.