BO11: "Collapse Into Now" by R.E.M.

In the '80s, R.E.M. was one of my gateways into another cultural world outside my constricted Roscommon climes, and it all started when someone at my high school gave me one of their cassettes because she didn't like it. Although I was a radio kid from way back, R.E.M. hooked me from the first notes of "Feeling Gravity's Pull," and I became a fan for life, following their development and growth. Their small-screen I.R.S. years were fecund and rich, and when they moved into their new digs at Warner Brothers and quickly became million-selling arena stars, it seemed a natural progression rather than a false spiritual note.

But when founding member and drummer Bill Berry left the band due to health reasons, R.E.M. took years to recast and rediscover themselves as a "band," and their recorded work lost something in the process. And just as they seemed to sturdy the ship with Accelerate ['08] and Collapse Into Now ['11], Michael Stipe and Peter Buck and Mike Mills walked away from any new entries into their immortality project. Over thirty years of the entity of R.E.M., now given a punctuated end point, with promises of neither reunion shows nor vault-clearing reissues.

Which means that their last album was dismissed more readily than it should have, which is why it leads off my totally subjective "Best Of 2011" series of posts. Is Collapse the best album of their storied career, or the best album I heard this year? Not a chance for either. Is it their best, most consistently varied, and front-to-back listenable album since Bill Berry left the drum kit behind? Yep. Where Accelerate did just that, blowing by in a blast of welcome volume and dirt and aggression, Collapse offered a glimpse of the variation that used to be R.E.M.'s stock and trade. And while Collapse did at times echo the past glories of previous tracks, in a time of diminished expectations in both the general world of artistic endeavor as well as the micro universe of R.E.M.'s catalog, that means something, too. It's a shame they're gone, but they'll never really leave, and Collapse Into Now is as robust a coda as one can hope for. R.I.P. R.E.M.