After the surprise departure of drummer Bill Berry, the remaining members of R.E.M. found themselves unmoored and adrift both professionally and musically. They had always presented R.E.M. as a cohesive, democratic whole, with all four members receiving equal songwriting credit. Despite their one-time vow not to move forward as anything but a quartet, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe stuck it out after Berry left. Some fans considered this to be an unfortunate decision, but the remaining members seemed to view it as an opportunity to redefine their sound. R.E.M.'s first post-Berry album, 1998's Up, picked up not where its predecessor, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, left off, but where Radiohead's OK Computer did, with the trio taking a touristic trip into synths, programmed beats, and sound effects, and quoting Pet Sounds almost verbatim on "At My Most Beautiful". It sounded like a transitional record, but then so did the follow-up, Reveal.
On their third post-Berry album, Around the Sun, Buck, Mills, and Stipe have settled on an uneasy mixture of textureless production and tentative stabs at past glory. On lead track and first single, "Leaving New York", Stipe harmonizes with himself in a low voice that could have been sampled from Reckoning. "Final Straw" borrows its whirling organ from Out of Time's "Low", and Q-Tip's cameo on "The Outsider" recalls KRS-One's appearance on "Radio Song". Around the Sun sounds more straightforward than its two predecessors, however none of the instruments-- including Stipe's voice-- sound live or organic. Instead, they have a sparkling sheen, which has never been the best trait for either Stipe's vocals or Buck's usually piercing guitar.
Concurrent with the band's move away from its rootsy jangle was a trend in Stipe's songwriting toward the blandly declarative, which began with "Everybody Hurts". Each subsequent album has contained more and more full-sentence song titles-- "You're in the Air", "I've Been High", "She Just Wants to Be", "I'll Take the Rain", etc. This tendency seems foreign and unexpected coming from a songwriter who in the past sounded unwilling to settle for easy answers, and who even parsed the difference between asking and telling on "Fall on Me".
Perhaps it's impending middle age, perhaps it's the empty drum stool, or perhaps it's Stipe's role as the pop culture attache for the American political left, but his lyrics have become lazily explanatory: No longer content to question the world, Stipe seems intent on simply describing it, often in the most anodyne terms. "It's harder to leave than to be left behind," he sings on "Leaving New York". Elsewhere, he says, "Open up your eyes/ You're so alive" ("Aftermath"), "There's love at the end of the line" ("High Speed Train"), and, "Some things don't hold up over the course of a lifetime" ("Worst Joke Ever"). Too often Stipe sounds like a parent passing on received wisdom to children. At worst, this tendency is grossly arrogant; at best, it's merely complacent, as if success has excused R.E.M. from searching beyond platitudes.
But Around the Sun manages to overcome at least some of its shortcomings thanks to Stipe's new role as shunned lover. Having once promised he would never write a love song-- or lip-sync in a video, or carry on past 1999, or play as a trio-- he sounds very new to the form, and songs like "Make It All OK" and "High Speed Train" even sound endearingly awkward and vulnerable.
Elsewhere, Stipe's love songs are more cryptic. On "The Outsiders", he sings about meeting someone for dinner and getting life-changing news, but he never reveals the terrible secret. "Make It All OK"-- about recriminations between lovers-- gives Stipe his best line: He answers rejection with the taunt, "Jesus loves me fine." His tone is so self-serious that the song sounds bled of its humor, pathos approaching bathos. But Stipe's romantic confusion-- and the unprecedented hints at what may or may not be his personal life-- gives "Make It All OK" and "Aftermath" a prismatically emotional quality, their flaws so naked that they become strengths.
It's too bad the same can't be said of Around the Sun in its entirety. Its chief problem is that every word, every note, and every instrument sounds dry, sapped of most of their personality. Whereas R.E.M. were once Southern eccentrics trying to figure things out, and making lasting music in the process, lately they sound neither Southern nor eccentric and, more to the point, their music is far from memorable.
