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Activism is, of course, nothing new to Stipe. He’s been letting his feelings be known about political and social issues ever since he came out of his shell as a frontman and began enunciating his lyrics. The band have even written a number of songs that could be considered political over the years. Lifes Rich Pageant had "Cuyahoga" (named for a famously polluted Ohio river) and "The Flowers of Guatemala." And as Michael Moore demonstrated, even the pop hit "Shiny Happy People" has a political edge of sorts. But as direct as some of Stipe’s statements have been, his lyrics have always had an open-ended quality that blunted their political edge or challenged you to read your own message into the material. And despite the band’s recent activism, Around the Sun is of a piece with past R.E.M. albums in this regard. It’s enough to make you wonder whether Buck and Mills, for all their willingness to perform at partisan political fundraisers and events, have insisted that Stipe keep his rhetoric to himself when it comes to writing R.E.M. lyrics.

"We wouldn’t be on stage and we wouldn’t have been part of these concerts unless we all agreed with the cause," is Stipe’s answer. "We’re pretty much in line with each other. I mean, if anything, those guys help me edit the stuff that I do, and if something isn’t working they’ll tell me. The lyrics are the most difficult part for me; the melody is like breathing. And if I do have trouble with the melody, then Mike can always help me. But it’s the lyric that’s the most difficult part."

So perhaps he’s the one who’s uncomfortable mixing politics and songwriting? "That’s not at all inaccurate, and I can speak for Peter and Mike on this as well. We’ve always considered who we are as people and what our beliefs are to be separate from the work. The work is what it is. And the work kind of takes over. A song or a group of songs become their own thing. And our job, I think, is to do our best to allow a song or album to be what it wants to be and to do that as clearly and as well as we can.

"Of course, elements of who we are work their way into our music. But we still feel the need to point out something that seems very evident to us, which is that who we are as people is very, very different from what we do as musicians. Maybe just drawing that distinction is our way of preventing any overwriting or of overwhelming the work with political philosophy. Because our best work doesn’t come from a thinking place. I maintain that whenever I turn off my thinking brain and allow a more unconscious voice to take over and do the work, the best stuff falls out of me.

"We write and play music because we love music, and we’re huge music fans. And then we’re people outside of that. They influence each other. But I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever sat down with the idea of writing a political song, whether it’s ‘The Flowers of Guatemala’ or, on the new album, ‘The Worst Joke Ever.’ I’m just not smart enough to write a song about certain people who are stuck with mid-20th-century ideas in the 21st century. ‘The Worst Joke Ever," to me, is about a certain mentality that I associate with the Cold War, which is really kind of a flat-Earth mentality now. I mean, it’s the 21st century. I’m 44. I’m kind of ready to be here. I look at people who are older than me, some of them in great positions of power, and it seems like they’re not ready to be here — that they’re still trying to cling to the idea that the world is still flat."

And in "The Worst Joke Ever," Stipe finds a way to address his discomfort with having people like that in positions of power. Then again, the song could as easily be about a boring dinner party. And it’s got an undulating, piano-and-acoustic-guitar-driven pulse that sets Stipe up for one of those R.E.M. choruses that moves for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on. That’s the R.E.M. I fell in love with in 1983. And it’s nice to have them back, even without Bill Berry behind the drums.

R.E.M. perform this Friday, October 29, at the FleetCenter, on Causeway Street at North Station; call (617) 931-2000.