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Just doing what they do
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"Hi, we’re R.E.M. and this is what we do," said R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, addressing the audience early in the band’s gleaming two-hour performance last Sunday at the Tweeter Center. The bashful sentiment was in keeping with the kind of understated, folkish, often reflective rock that R.E.M. has perfected over the course of two decades. And it came in striking contrast to the singer’s jubilant embrace of that material and his extroverted onstage persona — the sly grin that flashed across Stipe’s face from time to time belied his confidence in R.E.M.’s ability to do what they do very well indeed. The two other founding members of the band — poker-faced guitarist Peter Buck and affable bassist Mike Mills (drummer Bill Berry quit in 1995 after recovering from a brain aneurysm) — were less theatrical but no less commanding. Despite the chill in the air, Stipe shed his protective layers of clothing — two jackets and a sweater — as the set progressed from the appropriate opener "Begin the Begin" up through an equally appropriate closing number, "It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Although it isn’t due to hit stores until the end of the month, this R.E.M. tour is ostensibly meant to promote In Time: The Best of R.E.M 1988─2003 (Warner Bros.), a retrospective compilation. And the set reflected that. Backed by a second guitarist, a keyboardist, and a drummer, Buck, Mills, and Stipe time-tripped their way back through college-radio days hits like "(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville," touched upon tunes that marked their mainstream breakthrough like "Losing My Religion," and worked their way up to more recent, post-Berry material like the brooding, soft-focus "Daysleeper." If the band’s most recent Warner Bros. albums (1998’s Up and 2001’s Reveal) have felt a little tepid and lackluster, their exuberant dash though their back catalogue was anything but. Buck’s signature guitar riff on "The One I Love" and the feedback-laced guitar strafing he gave "Orange Crush" lent both songs an unmistakable sense of urgency and emotional power. And the hyperkinetic Stipe remains one of the most distinctive voices in mainstream rock: he’s still able to intimately engage an audience in a venue as large as the Tweeter Center while retaining the air of mystery that’s surrounded the him since he first mumbled the opening lines of "Radio Free Europe" two decades ago.
BY JONATHAN PERRY
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