Moment of Reckoning: R.E.M. Shifts Gears

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THE FIRST STEP was admitting that they had a problem.

After decades of success, first as indie darlings for their spare, Southern-fried sound, then as bona fide rock monsters with hits like "The One I Love," "It's the End of the World as We Know It" and "Losing My Religion," R.E.M. had lost its way.

The worst of times came in 2004, when a new album, "Around the Sun" — the latest in a series of electronica-infused steps away from the band's signature sound — was widely panned by fans and critics.

It was a disc even its creators didn't love. Count guitarist Peter Buck among its most vocal detractors.

"I had problems with that album the day we finished it," Buck told Filter magazine in March. In fact, The Toronto Sun reported this week that acrimony over "Around the Sun" almost led Buck to quit the band.

The result, according to bassist Mike Mills, was an about-face in style to better foster substance.

"We really didn't know what direction we were trying to go in, and we weren't really helping each other to figure that out," he said by phone. "So we got to that point and we just said 'OK, we've gotta restructure here, we have to find a better way to approach this.' And that's what we did on 'Accelerate.'"

Created with producer Jacknife Lee, whose previous credits include discs with U2, Snow Patrol and Editors, "Accelerate" saw a return to form with a modern twist. The grating electronic riffs of "Around the Sun" were replaced with the grungy, fuzzy guitars of "Living Well Is the Best Revenge," the spare, haunting keyboards of "Hollow Man" and the performance-ready simplicity of "I'm Gonna DJ." The band's politics, however, are still as evident as ever: "Living Well" is a middle-finger at the media; the spooky "Houston" blasts the government for its response to Hurricane Katrina.

It's upbeat. It's raw. It sounds more like a live band than a synthesized concoction. It sounds ... like early R.E.M.?

That's where Mills is quick to disagree.

"I wouldn't know how to sound like our early work," he said. "This is R.E.M. in 2008, not R.E.M. at any other time. ... I think that any band that tries to recapture the past is making a serious mistake, because it's forced and it's not real."

For now, Mills said, R.E.M.'s reality includes a tour that stretches through at least November, including a stop at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Wednesday.

"We feel very complete and very whole," Mills said. "We've got a big year coming up."

Mills spoke with Express about song politics, backing vocals, the digital marketplace and R.E.M.'s future.

» EXPRESS: In interviews that I've seen recently, both [singer] Michael [Stipe] and Peter have made reference to the last few albums — "Around the Sun" in particular — as being weaker than other parts of your catalogue. Do you agree with that?
» MILLS: No, I think the perception is incorrect in that. I think "Reveal" is probably our most underrated record. "Around the Sun" has great songs on it, but we tried to do too much. We tried to do a tour and a greatest hits record right in the middle of it, and obviously in retrospect, that was a mistake. I think it just caused us to lose focus and not be concentrating strictly on what we were doing. And that's really something we wanted to do with this one was to make sure that we were thinking about nothing else except making this record.

I think if we'd finished that record before we started the tour — the greatest hits tour that we did — I think it would have been a much better record.

» EXPRESS: One of the things that I heard on "Accelerate" that I hadn't heard in a while was more of your backing vocals. Was that a premeditated change?
» MILLS: You know, I really felt like singing. How much I sing depends on how much I hear. If I hear parts there that I think will improve the song, then I'm certainly gonna lay them down. And these songs really felt like they had space for me to sing, so I did.

» EXPRESS: It sounds more like a live record than it does a really produced record.
» MILLS: Well, we recorded it that way. Most of the takes — I guess all of the takes — are done with all of the band in the room except Michael, and even sometimes Michael. And most of them are pretty early takes too. There are very few that are past the second or third take.

» EXPRESS: And is that different from the way you guys were doing things recently?
» MILLS: Well, certainly with "Up," and to a lesser extent, "Reveal," we were basically creating a new way, for us, of making a record. Which was, since we didn’t really have a drummer per se, we decided to build it like a brick wall, piece by piece. That's one way to make a record, and I think we made some really beautiful music that way. But the way we feel about the band today, we feel very complete and very whole, and we felt we should approach this record with that in mind.

» EXPRESS: Both Michael and Peter, in other interviews, discussed communication problems that the band might have had in the past few years. Was that a problem for you guys? Did you come close to breaking up at any point?
» MILLS: As with any long-term relationship, there are certainly ups and downs. The only time it was a real serious issue, it was at the end of "Around the Sun." Because, as I say, with the greatest hits tour and everything, by the time we got back in the studio, we'd completely lost our focus. We really didn't know what direction we were trying to go in, and we weren't really helping each other to figure that out. So we got to that point and we just said "OK, we've gotta restructure here, we have to find a better way to approach this." And that's what we did on "Accelerate."

» EXPRESS: When you listen to this record, it sounds like it's performed by a band that's excited about what it's doing.
» MILLS: That's very true. We were excited to play these songs. We were excited to work with Jacknife Lee. We knew we had a good thing going. And we had a great time in the studio pretty much every day.

» EXPRESS: R.E.M.'s always been pretty adept at spotting technological trends and hopping on them. This album premiered on iLike, and it has a remixable video for "Supernatural Superserious." Is the tech end of things an initiative that you guys are involved in as a band, or does that happen elsewhere.
» MILLS: We very much like finding ways to break down the walls between the band and the fans. Whether it's remixing your own video or having a chance to listen to the record before it's actually out — but in a legal format — those things are great. They're really fun. They give people a sense of participation, a sense of sharing, and, you know, some of those videos were better than the one we put out there, so it's always good to see people show their creativity as well.

» EXPRESS: Do you ever see R.E.M. doing something like what Radiohead did, putting an album out for free on the Web?
» MILLS: No. (laughs) As I said in "Rolling Stone" when they asked me about that, I said I don't have enough faith in human nature to tell people to pay what they want. I've seen the honor system at work and it doesn't work very well.

» EXPRESS: Because usually what they want to pay is nothing.
» MILLS: Exactly. And you can't blame them for that. If somebody gave away free shoes, I'd take 'em. But, you know, that's not the way the world works. I admire Radiohead for taking chances, but I don't really care to follow that business model.

» EXPRESS: On the new album, some of the songs take on specific topics —"Houston" is about Hurricane Katrina, "Living Well Is the Best Revenge" is about the media. When the band releases a song with a strong opinion, is that the view of the band as a whole, or just the guy who wrote the song?
» MILLS: If Michael puts something pretty blatant out there, then, yeah, we vet it first. We're not going to have him saying these overtly political things with which Peter and I disagree. Fortunately, we're all politically pretty much on the same page, so that seldom becomes an issue. And the other thing is, Michael writes his lyrics so relatively obliquely, so that you don't have to stand there and go, "It's about Bush! It's about Bush!" You can find the Bush in there if you want to, but he writes about human emotions and the human condition and that's really the overriding theme.

» EXPRESS: When you come to D.C., you're going to be playing at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland. That brings you perilously close to Rockville. Any trepidation?
» MILLS: No, there's nothing wrong with playing a song with a local connection. I'm not saying we'll play it for sure, but we have before.

» EXPRESS: If there was a song from your catalogue that you could erase from existence, which would it be?
» MILLS: (Pauses.) You know, I don't hate any of our songs. There are some that I'm less inclined to play live than others, but if we all got rid of the songs we really didn't want to play live, we might have a pretty short set list. Sometimes you play songs at night that aren't your favorites, but you find the joy where you can in there.

» EXPRESS: After 28 years, 14 studio albums — what's next for R.E.M.?
» MILLS: Just this tour, mostly. That's really all we're thinking about. We'll be playing all the way through November, it looks like, so we've got a big year coming up. And, of course, with Peter and I, there's always songwriting going on. Anytime you sit there and pick up a guitar, you're hoping a song comes out. So I would say we'll be sitting around the dressing room writing the next record and then going out and playing this one on the live shows.

Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Records