R.E.M.'s "Collapse Into Now": Rock Turtleneck's 2011 Album of the Year

In 1987, Paul Newman won the Best Actor Oscar for the film The Color of Money. It was far from his best-ever performance or his best film. But Newman was getting on in years and he had never won an Oscar. So when he won, everyone knew that it was not only for The Color of Money, but for Hud and Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and The Verdict and his salad dressing and for just being Paul Newman.

Well that’s what Rock Turtleneck is doing this year by naming R.E.M.’s Collapse into Now our 2011 Album of the Year. Was it the best album of 2011? Probably not. But then again there were no other clear winners in my book. (We'll discuss some runners-up later this week.)

But to many Gen-Xers like me, R.E.M. were like The Beatles, with an incredible sense of unity and a string of albums that seemed to mirror and inform my growth as a humanoid in some sort of non-linear yet unmistakeable way. 


And R.E.M.’s announcement on September 21st that they were breaking up felt like the end of an extended adolescence that began the first time I heard their song “1,000,000” on the Garden City, NY station WLIR.

Collapse Into Now is full of typically fine songs, fierce guitar work by Peter Buck and the sweet harmonies of Mike Mills. It nods to practically every style of music they touched on in their amazing 31-year career (well 17 years or so of it was amazing). If R.E.M. was our Beatles, then this was their Abbey Road. After years of discord and barely hanging on, they dug down deep to make one last record the way they used to. 


They knew it was their last hurrah when they recorded it. In fact, Stipe has said that the picture on the cover is him waving goodbye to his fans. And he does the same thing lyrically in “All the Best”:

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

While “All the Best” sounded like it could have been on 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant, the post-Katrina dirge "Oh My Heart" was served up Automatic for the People.

While no masterpiece on the level of Automatic or Document, Collapse Into Now was R.E.M.’s best record since the departure of drummer Bill Berry in 1997. (It's hard to believe, but R.E.M. was together without Berry almost as long as with him.) 


It’s also an impressive rebound from 2004’s Around the Sun, one of the lamest records ever made by a major artist. In fact, the band said that the atrociousness of that record inspired them to go out on a strong note with Collapse and 2008's Accelerate.



Collapse Into Now begins and ends with “Discoverer,” which  Stipe says is a reminiscence of discovering New York City when R.E.M. first started touring by van in the early 1980s. It turns out that this take at Hansa Studios in Berlin, where they recorded the record, is supposedly last performance they ever did together as a group. Maybe that's why they all clap at the end.

Congratulations, R.E.M. on this incredible career-capping award. And thanks for Murmur, Reckoning, Document, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, New Adventures in Hi-Fi and your... umm... salad dressing. Belong.

Buy R.E.M.’s Collapse Into Now on iTunes here.