REM in the live lounge - MP3s!!

Readers of the music press will have noticed that REM's latest album, Accelerate, is being hailed as the band's latest "return to form". If you examine the small print, however, the form they're referring to is that of early albums like Murmur and Fables Of The Reconstruction - both superb, but both lacking in the songcraft and emotional impact of Automatic For The People.

But then, the critics always cite the band's detached, pre-millennial masterpiece Up as a career lowpoint, so what do they know anyway?

Accelerate, it turns out, is just an above average latter-period REM album. A vast improvement on the dismal Around The Sun, but no better than, say, New Adventures In Hi-Fi or Reveal.

The band have just been in Radio One's Live Lounge. They were in unusually upbeat form, with Michael Stipe admitting to being grumpy for an entire decade because he couldn't find good vegetarian food in the US. He also revealed the Chris Martin came up with the title for their latest single...

The band then performed that song, Supernatural Superserious, and a cover of The Editor's stately Munich. You should listen to them both, because they are beautiful.

:: REM - Supernatural Superserious [MP3 link]
:: REM - Munich (live lounge cover) [MP3 link]

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