Modern Rock In Motion: From reissued R.E.M. to the colorful rock of The No Ones

Modern Rock in Motion column relives R.E.M. post-2000 and brightly discovers the sonic pop of The No Ones.

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By Peter Lindblad

Abuzz with activity, camp R.E.M. is suddenly alive with the sound of music, with singer Michael Stipe readying his first solo album for a 2023 release.

Keeping up with guitarist Peter Buck requires constant surveillance, catching Buck in the act of making the ‘60s-inspired pastiche My Best Evil Friend – reviewed below – with intercontinental co-conspirators The No Ones and producing The Eyelids’ wonderful Colossal Waste of Light, both unveiled earlier this year. Escaping the confines of the studio, but not before recording a new LP with The Baseball Project, Buck finally got some fresh air, hitting the road with The No Ones in June and July, before turning around to link up with The Baseball Project for another round of touring in August and September.

And TV’s favorite gritty, tension-filled restaurant kitchen drama, FX’s “The Bear,” has joined with R.E.M. on a video for a remixed “Strange Currencies,” with a new digital Strange Currencies EP – boasting a previously unreleased live version of the song and other recordings of it – also available. That remix is culled from 2019’s 25th edition of Monster. Additionally, the frequency of R.E.M. music drops in “The Bear” has been a welcome development.

Even original drummer Bill Berry, who’s been lying low for decades down on the farm, surfaced in January with The Bad Ends and their acclaimed inaugural LP of twangy, contemporary Southern Gothic pop, The Power and the Glory.

All of which is a roundabout way to get to news of Craft Recordings’ long-awaited vinyl reissues of 2004’s Around the Sun and 2011’s swan song Collapse into Now, two long out-of-print R.E.M. albums overly ripe for reassessment that came out July 14. They are getting the 180-gram treatment. Reveal and Accelerate are next in line, with a release date of Aug. 25.