"The organizers of the Sziget festival are delighted that R.E.M. has accepted their invitation to play a headlining concert on 16 August on the Sziget Main Stage.R.E.M., Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills, are going to tour Europe’s greatest festivals in July and August with their soon-to-be-released album. The seven chosen festivals include Rock Werchter in Belgium, Oxegene in Dublin and T In The Park in Glasgow, and also Sziget, where visitors can hear the new material first hand. Accelerate, which is reported to be the group’s fastest and most energetic record in years, is released on April 1.
R.E.M. from Athens, Georgia are one of the most definitive bands of the past twenty-five years, the intellectual key-rockgroup to the eighties, nineties and noughties. The music of the threesome and the session-instrumentalists (foursome until 1997 when drummer Bill Berry retired on account of health problems) is a compelling unity of classic American-rock, folk-rock, art-rock, art-punk along with captivating sensitivity and power.
But then of course all these definitions are plain redundant considering that it’s Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck who have been defining their own style for many years now. R.E.M. is the definition itself, and it’s others who have to live up to the comparison with them. It seems unfair to highlight one or other piece of their unbelievably high-standard set of albums, but if it is still necessary Document, Green, Out Of Time, Automatic For The People and Monster are forever compulsory listen beyond doubt."
Source: Sziget
21.02.2008