Collapse into Forever

2011 has been a veritable music armageddon for me.  One of my top 5 bands broke up this past week, and one of my very close outliers broke up a few months back.  (the top 5, in no particular order is The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths, R.E.M., and The Red Hot Chili Peppers)  I posted about the White Stripes when that happened.  I couldn't not post about R.E.M.

I'm a little young to be a true R.E.M. fan.  They formed a few years before I was even born.  But that doesn't mean I haven't listened to everything they put out over and over again, entranced with their poetry and tact alongside honest expression of human experience, while, all the while, carrying the torch for progressive change despite the political apathy most music (especially in their genre) slid into after 1975.

Their final album, which I just heard straight through for the first time a few weeks ago, isn't their best.  It's not even their fifth best.  R.E.M. hasn't released anything as good as Monster since Monster and they haven't released a single track as good as the worst track on Automatic For the People (Monty got a Raw Deal) since Electron Blue.

But even so, Electron Blue exists.

There was, there will always be, something inspiring, critical, dangerous and seductive about R.E.M.'s music.  There is a message of despondent hope, buried deep inside their overall ouvre that will forever remain unique to their sound.  I'm content with the fifteen albums they released.  If they only released Everybody Hurts, Losing My Religion, End of the World, and What's the Frequency Kenneth, they'd be a top 20 band in my mind with those 4 songs.  But they have so much more.  The One I Love is the realest, most succinct and glorious love song ever recorded, and I don't know that that will ever change.

There is a wanderer in the R.E.M. listener.  Something longing, yearning, pining for a deeper, more honest, more useful existence.  There is hope and tranquility, but it is otherwordly.

It does sadden my spirit, to know that Collapse into Now, a mostly boring album will be the last thing they ever release.  But on the other side of that, I am thankful for all R.E.M. was and will be in me, for me, forever.

Soak into this video, let it soak into you, and ponder when, if ever, a band like this will come again:


Someday, perhaps, we'll all find our river.
-Zack

"3 and a half minutes felt like a lifetime"
-Better than Ezra