Accelerometer

I don't wish to slight the wonderful field of music journalism (writing about idiots, by idiots, for idiots) but I'm getting kind of annoyed by the reviews I've been reading about the new REM album Accelerate.

The reviews themselves are fine and completely correct about the album. It's good and reminds you of earlier REM work (circa Green).

However, it is NOT their best album "since Automatic for the People", which is pretty much what every review says.

New Adventures in Hi-Fi was a brilliant trip to the edge of alt-country and a spectacular follow-up to the harder Monster (an album I liked but can see why others wouldn't). I haven't seen a single review that even mention New Adventures, which makes me think that perhaps they are judging the new album only on REM's most famous work.

At this point I'm going to stop before I become a raving fanboy. But I just wanted to speak my peace on this.