by Tom Demi and Bryce Napier, first published January 17, 2016
Collapse Into Now
released March 8, 2011
Warner Bros. Records
“With the benefit of hindsight, it’s exceedingly easy to read the signs that this would be the last R.E.M. record.”
It's kind of a sad coincidence to be writing this in the days immediately following the death of David Bowie, since he recorded his Blackstar album knowing it would probably be his last, and so it was with R.E.M. and Collapse Into Now. The three official members—Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe (thankfully, all still with us in 2016, alive and well)—felt that they had gone as far as they could as a band by 2011. They had had a successful album and tour in 2008 with an aggressive, guitar-oriented approach, but what was next? Repeat the same formula and risk looking predictable or boring? Go electronic and risk looking foolish or out of their depth? And wasn't it a bit poignant to think that they were on the cusp of lasting longer as a band without Bill Berry than with him (and with less success)?
Their solution was to bow out with an album that largely paid tribute to the styles of music that had put them on the map musically. Acoustic guitars, layered harmonies, guest vocalists, and even mandolins made return appearances, but the challenge was to make an album that felt comfortable without being so familiar that it felt uninspired. To accomplish this, they brought back Accelerate's producer, Jacknife Lee, who, along with Stipe, aimed to get at the essence of the songs and make them feel as true as possible. By Lee's own account, this ended up alienating Buck and Mills to an extent, as he and Stipe edited and rearranged things rather mercilessly at times.
So, did it work? I would say mostly yes. Having recently obtained a vinyl copy of this album at last, I sat down to listen while reading the lyric sheet and realized—to my amazement—that this was actually the first time I had ever read the lyrics all the way through! Bryce has mentioned how certain R.E.M. albums slipped out of his consciousness soon after their release, but for me, this is the only one where this had ever happened. For the first three songs in particular, it was exciting to realize how playful and poetic some of the lyrics were, but I have to say that for some of the others, reading the words was a bit of a letdown. Also, there are definitely tracks that musically sound to me more like homages to previous songs than original ideas. On the other hand, there's a nicely broad overall palette, and there are more hits than misses.
Before I get into specifics, I'll let Bryce give us his initial thoughts.
We'd be deluding ourselves to pretend that it didn't settle in under most people's radars, whether they'd purchased it or not. While it would be poetic and heartwarming to think that the momentum they'd picked up from Accelerate translated into a cultural groundswell of support for this one, it just didn't—Collapse, in fact, ended up as their worst-selling record, at least in the US. For every copy it sold, they'd moved 25 units apiece of Out Of Time and Automatic For The People. To frame it another (depressing) way, only 4% of the people who bought those landmark records bought Collapse Into Now. (Admittedly, I do not know if/how digital sales figure into the tally.) I don't think it was rejected by the public at large as a disappointing record; folks just didn't know or care anymore that it even existed. I'm fairly certain I heard more off of this album in response to the press release that they were dissolving the band than I did when the actual record was released, and I don't recall how long it took me to get around to acquiring it.
So, yeah—we now get to ponder the album where the band were pondering their own legacy, as they prepared to pack it in. With the benefit of hindsight, it's exceedingly easy to read the signs that this would be the last R.E.M. record (Stipe himself pointed out that he was waving goodbye on the front cover). And whether or not we flatter ourselves as savvy enough to have interpreted the evidence before the official announcement came (six months after the release of Collapse Into Now), it was deliberately crafted as a swan song. That leaves us with two sets of the same music to consider. The first is a self-contained suite of songs to be enjoyed or dismissed on their own merits; the second, an identical suite carrying the burden of being R.E.M.'s last album. Several times over the course of this catalogue reassessment, I've noted the importance (for me) of separating an album from its critical and cultural context before I can enjoy it on its own terms. This might be the rare case, however, where an album is easier to appreciate with an understanding of the context, the backstory.
And that backstory is explicit in several of the songs: "Oh My Heart" is crafted as an epilogue to the previous album's rough-hewn "Houston," further exploring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, even going so far as to nearly repeat a couple of lyric lines. "Every Day Is Yours To Win" feels like a sequel to "Everybody Hurts," "All The Best" seems to pick up musically where "The Wake-Up Bomb" left off in 1996, and "Blue" features Patti Smith in a role similar to that employed in "E-Bow The Letter," once again acting as the comforting, wise maternal figure reassuring a troubled soul as voiced by Stipe. Probably the song that breaks the mold most definitively is the manic "Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter," complete with the shouted harmonies of the young singer Peaches and a searing solo from Patti Smith's guitarist Lenny Kaye.
For this album, for the first time since the 1980s, there was no deluxe CD version released; instead, they made the deluxe version a digital download, through iTunes. Extensive liner notes were penned by Jacknife Lee, there are "live in the studio" bonus tracks, and one of those is a video of them performing "That Someone Is You." Most telling, though, are the photos in the photo gallery—whereas, in the past, any photos of the band tended to be oblique or random or somehow obscured, these are mostly very sharp, clear, posed shots of the three of them, as if to say, "This is the last time we're gonna do this, so let's do it sincerely and directly one time before we go."
Most of Collapse's songs feel like they were vying to be the closing track, so it's difficult for me to fathom why they went with "Blue," a drifting studio creation that grafted a Stipe recitation onto a leftover backing track. The tone of "Discoverer," which opens the album (and technically closes it as well, in a reprise dreamt up specifically as a workaround to prevent Patti Smith's voice from being the last voice you hear on an R.E.M. record), echoes the last words of the last original Calvin And Hobbes strip: "Let's go exploring!"—suggesting that the restless adventures will continue, even if we aren't there to witness them. "All The Best," in addition to having a title that sounds like the valediction before the signature on a letter, is both self-deprecating and defiant, as Stipe teasingly acknowledges that "it's just like me to overstay my welcome" to those fans who thought the band should have ended years earlier, while brazenly declaring they still had what it takes to "show the kids how to do it." They seem to be holding the baton out to the next generation in "That Someone Is You." A more general-purpose inspirational message is embedded in lullabye form in "Every Day Is Yours To Win." Myself, I would have voted hands-down for "It Happened Today." R.E.M. had a long history of ending their albums on an uplifting note, plus a notorious early history of being inscrutable, and so—regardless of the unspecified event referred to in the title—going out with an ebullient, hand-clappy singalong that melts into soaring, wordless harmonies for its final two minutes would have truly nailed the dismount.
I couldn't agree more about "It Happened Today"; I've had that same thought while listening to this album again recently. Yes, it ends with Eddie Vedder's voice dominating, but the song could easily have been mixed to emphasize Stipe and Mills at the very end. Together with Joel Gibb (of the Canadian group the Hidden Cameras), it's an absolutely beautiful and, yes, uplifting blending of voices, and it could have gone on even longer. As it happens, the band provided the tools for any qualified fan to do just that: They made available for download no less than 194 "stems" (all the pieces of the individual vocal and instrument tracks) for anyone to remix or re-edit as they pleased. I do wish there were more to the lyrics at the beginning of the song, both in quantity and substance, but it's still an exceedingly warm moment that would have been a fitting farewell.
Another song I wish were longer is "That Someone Is You," and it actually was longer originally until Stipe and Lee cut out a minute from the middle of it. I don't understand that decision at all, since it's the most catchy song on the album, for my money. Of course, "Mine Smell Like Honey," which was chosen as the U.S. single, is also quite the earworm, but it surely short-circuited the brains of many listeners with its stickily suggestive lyrics (and to think that "Tongue" seemed a bit TMI!). The major, fully realized standouts for me would be "ÜBerlin," which expertly sounds like classic early-'90s R.E.M. without directly aping anything from that era, and "Discoverer," a fantastic, inviting opening that announces itself with the drama and majesty of a huge, ancient church bell, and it is stirring in its reprise as well.
In the end, when R.E.M. did announce their breakup months later, they chose to punctuate it with a career-spanning compilation called Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage that also featured three even newer songs: the playfully Pylon-esque "A Month Of Saturdays," the dirge-like "Hallelujah," and, in a surprising nod to their Reveal days, the breezy but poignant "We All Go Back To Where We Belong." None of the three are classics, but it was nice to have one last burst of creativity to accompany their announcement. The year 2011 also marked the end of their annual holiday packages to the fan club members. They had been including some kind of single (one time as a VHS tape!) since 1988, and the final one was a CD single featuring 2008 live versions of "Life And How To Live It" and "Perfect Circle," as yet another way of wrapping up their legacy.
As a side slice of personal trivia, I relocated with my family yet again in late 2010, this time from Kansas to the western reaches of Philadelphia's Main Line. After knowing Tom as an online acquaintance for years, we were now living only an hour apart, so we met in person for the first time near the onset of spring in 2011. After tracking down the date, I've "discoverered" it was a mere 11 days after the release of Collapse Into Now. So the entire recorded output of R.E.M. (save for those three straggler tracks from Part Lies…) had just barely drawn to its conclusion before we crossed paths in real life. I imagine if we had known at that time that R.E.M. had just issued their last album, it would have been fresh enough in our minds to have brought it up in the ensuing conversation, but I have no specific memory of them being mentioned at all.
In any case, it's kind of fun to try to draw the parallels with their back catalogue. Is "Mine Smell Like Honey" referencing the lascivious swagger of Monster, or the feel-good guitar pop of Green? Does "That Someone Is You" try to recapture the joyous rave-ups of Accelerate, or the unruly garage punk of Reckoning? Do I detect Up's halcyon atmospherics in "Every Day Is Yours To Win," or is that mannered chamber pop straight from Out Of Time? Is that the travel-worn philosophizing of New Adventures In Hi-Fi resurfacing on "ÜBerlin," or the homesick misanthropy of Fables Of The Reconstruction? It's a fun exercise, sure, but it's also pointless—because, ultimately, the answer is always yes. They are all of these things. As a band, they were all of these things. They were staunchly anti-establishment for long enough to become the establishment. They were pioneers and stalwarts. Together, they authored a rock and roll story so archetypal it is extraordinarily unique.