I'm pinning rock hope for the new year on REM

Finally. Something to be excited about.

As far as I'm concerned, the first album to really get excited for this year is the new one from REM, Collapse Into Now, due on March 8.

Before you read any further, go to remhq.com and send the band your e-mail to get a link to download a new single, "Discoverer,"an even-paced, mid-tempo rocker with a good dose of distortion that's got a little of that old Monster sound. If you've followed the band, the it's a sound that would sound at home on the band's last one, Accelerate. 

If you haven't been following the band recently, Accelerate was a really great album. A return to the early '90s for the band -- a period when they were comfortable kings of the newly commercially viable alternative rock world. In fact, a case could be made that REM invented alternative rock with their first single "Radio Free Europe" and album, Murmur, a watershed record that would influence every alt and indie rocker after. Go back and listen to Murmur and Reckoning, perhaps the best 1 and 2 punch by a brand new rock band ever.

So why care now? There are very few bands that have a legacy like REM's. Thirty years of consistency. They have not always been at the top of their game, ("I still hate Shiny Happy People," sorry)  but they have always followed their own muse. They became one of the biggest bands in the world by building their own sound and writing good songs. I can't think of an example of the band trying to capitalize on a trend. In fact, one of their best records,  1992'a Automatic for the People, was a quiet beautiful record n that went in the opposite direction of the alt rock/grunge tastes of the time.

Whether you know it or not, REM is as important to Gen Xers as the Beatles  to Boomers. Or at least they should be. And unlike so many other important rock bands, they can still rock and do so honestly. Check out this trailer with clips from the new one and see for yourself.