What If We Give It Away?

I've heard the word "filler" applied to this song when talking about Lifes Rich Pageant. I wouldn't go so far as to called it a "filler" but it's definitely one of the weaker songs on the album. It's all surface and no depth, on first listen it's got a lovely-sounding vocal from Michael Stipe and the song as a whole is very archetypical R.E.M. But that's pretty much all you have. It also doesn't really have a proper chorus, which is no bad thing of course (neither does Country Feedback), but in the case of What If We Give It Away it comes across as being sub standard and unfinished.

As with many songs on Lifes Rich Pageant it is a re-working of an undeveloped song from their live set, in this case going back as far as 1981 when it was played a couple of times under the title Get On Their Way.

Lifes Rich Pageant is an odd album, with several re-worked old songs, an obscure cover song and a light-hearted instrumental, on paper Lifes Rich Pageant sounds like an album by a band who were clutching at creative straws. But, this is far from true. Lifes Rich Pageant is a grand step forward for the band, a celebratory statement from a band emerging from a dark period and, in this context, maybe What If We Give It Away does have a place here.

Stumble

Here's one for Halloween, no, not the scarily bad bass playing but the ghoulish sound effects during the song's Middle 8! I spent a long time looking for audio clips of "tortured screams" until it dawned on me that the eerie sound heard amongst the backwards guitars during the middle 8 is actually the sound of howling wind.

Stumble is a strange one, at 5 minutes and 41 seconds it's one of the longest songs R.E.M. have ever recorded, at a time in their career when everything was short, fast and straight to the point. But it's not long in a Pink Floyd/epic kind of way, more in a purposefully obscure way. It's more of a showcase for where R.E.M. were at in 1982. Interestingly it was never played live anywhere near as many times as the other songs on Chronic Town.

But despite not having the longevity of some of its neighbouring songs it's a great song nevertheless and I hope my cover goes part the way to doing it justice.

Until The Day Is Done

I know Until The Day Is Done isn't really what Accelerate is all about, and I feel like a bit of an old school R.E.M. fan for saying this but, this is probably my favourite track on Accelerate. It's also the direction I would love them to take for their next album.

Until The Day Is Done is a 3/4 tempo politically charged ballad played predominantly on an acoustic guitar in Drop D tuning - I think I'm right in saying the first time this tuning has been employed by the band since Gardening At Night back in 1982. It's based around a guitar riff that I believe first saw the light back in 1992 around the time Automatic For The People was being written, which probably goes a long way to explaining why I particularly like this song!

It is, however, my least favourite piece of audio production on Accelerate. I could write a separate account for my disapointment with Jacknife Lee's work on Accelerate but I will save that for another time. It really does just sound like layers of mud, even the quieter verses sound mono and cloudy and I believe there is as much unwanted clipping/compression during the chorus as there is on some of the really loud songs on Accelerate. I don't mean to sound disrespectful towards Jacknife Lee because it's good the band have opted for a fresh producer and some of his work is quite edgy and dynamic but I can't help wishing someone like Scott Litt had produced this particular song.