REM – Accelerate

REM have been my second favourite band for 20 years now (favourite being The Fall). I had lost touch with them after 2000, so that until now the most recent record of theirs I had heard was “Up” from 1998. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed – I sort of assumed that having been at the top for so long they would have lost their edge – but this is a damn fine album. Not quite in the same league as “New Adventures In Hi-Fi”, which is probably unsurpassable anyway, but still excellent. If it takes eight years of George W Bush to produce songs of the quality of “Living Well Is The Best Revenge”, then (sorry Barack) roll on President Palin.