R.E.M. Go Back to Where They Belong (Sort Of)

R.E.M. called it quits for good a couple months ago, but they are not quite done yet. On November 15, just in time for the holiday season they are releasing a career-spanning 40-song retrospective called Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage 1982-2011.

I believe the title of the record is from something Peter Buck said in an interview in Rolling Stone back in the 1980s. It's a nice mix of early classics like "Gardening at Night" and "Driver 8," megahits like "Losing My Religion" and "Man on the Moon" and well-chosen deep cuts like "Begin the Begin" and "New Test Leper."




 Part Lies also features three new songs, "A Month of Saturdays," "Hallelujah" (not the Leonard Cohen standard) and "We All Go Back to Where We Belong," which has already been turned into a video featuring different people of relative photogenicity standing around looking thoughtful, including the lovely Spiderman starlet Kirsten Dunst.



"We All Go Back to Where We Belong" is a pleasant tune in their EZ-listening Burt Bacharach mode, which is probably my least favorite R.E.M. mode. Personally, I wish they would bow out with something a little more rocking. "All the Best," from their last studio record, the mostly excellent Collapse Into Now, seems a much more fitting farewell. Musically it sounds like it could have been on Document, and the lyrics wryly allude to their 31 year-old work ethic and the fact that they are about to pack up the R.E.M. tent for good.

I'm in a part of your dreams
That you don't even understand
It's just like me to overstay my welcome, man
Let's sing it and rhyme
Let's give it one more time
Let's show the kids how to do it fine, fine, fine, fine

Here are R.E.M. giving "All the Best" one more time in Hansa Studios in Berlin, where they recorded Collapse Into Now. It's also where U2 recorded Achtung Baby in 1991 and David Bowie cut his famous 1970s "Berlin Trilogy" of "Heroes," Low and Lodger - all with Brian Eno.



R.E.M. on iTunes:
Buy Collapse Into Now here 
Pre-order Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage 1982-2011 here