Is Accelerate The Bastard Son of Monster?
I had to trim my Accelerate review for BC. Some people, when forced to prune their work, would find the excised parts to be of little value (hence the reason it was cut in the first place). Today I’m feeling just arrogant enough to think the stuff that landed on the cutting room floor is still worth posting somewhere. So here we go.
I pose the theory that Accelerate is sort of the bastard son of the band’s hit record, Monster. I just wanted to say bastard son. I do think the two songs share many sonic characteristics, though.
Anyway, I note in the review that Monster was a certified hit, selling more than 4M copies and reaching #1 on the US charts. I follow that up with the story of trying to sell my copy of Monster back to the used CD stores and being thwarted because too many of the 4 million people who bought the record had the same idea before me.
My theory on the mass recycling is that Monster wasn’t a particularly dynamic record. Peter Buck pretty much used the same effect pedal on the entire record (“Strange Currencies” might be the lone exception). The constant sound of that ragged guitar got a bit wearing by the end of it, even if many of the songs were quite good. Whatever the reason, Monster was eventually abandoned by many of the faithful.
For my part, I later came back to the record and was damn glad I wouldn’t have to buy it twice. It returned to favor with me and I even took a liking to songs I’d previously ignored. Of course, I did wind up buying the stupid thing twice because I got suckered into buying one of the CD+DVD deluxe sets about a year ago. I’m an idiot.
Filed under: Tags: R.E.M.
