Old Faces Vie for the Top 10 Tunes List

The two albums I'm checking in with today come from a couple of long-ago favorites. R.E.M. returned with a guitar-heavy set that reminded me why I was such an R.E.M. geek a couple decades ago, and Green Day used the code-name Foxboro Hot Tubs to release a jangly blast of Nuggets-style garage rock.

R.E.M., Accelerate

 I was such an R.E.M. fanatic in the '80s that I staked out the Toad Tape in the Ogden City Mall the day Lifes Rich Pageant came out, waiting for the mailman to arrive with the load of records—yes, records— so I could run home and spin it as fast as possible.

Like most R.E.M. fans of that era, I've been divided on the band's music since drummer Bill Berry left. While there have been some good songs in the intervening years, and the live shows remained electrifying, R.E.M.'s albums have been wildly inconsistent. Some dabbled in electronic beats, while others tried to recapture the band's chiming guitar glory of yesteryear.

  Accelerate is a guitar rave-up of an album, with Peter Buck taking the steering wheel on as consistent a set of tunes as the band has released in years. Songs like "Living Well is the Best Revenge," "Supernatural Superserious" and "Hollow Man" strike the perfect balance of singer Michael Stipe's political soapboxing and straightforward rock. Mike Mills harmony vocals are as vital as ever, too, on songs like "Mr. Richards."

All told, a massive leap forward from the band's moody last release, Around the Sun, and an energetic return to form.

Here's a taste of the new R.E.M., the vid for "Supernatural Superserious:" 

FOXBORO HOT TUBS, Stop, Drop and Roll!!!

 Talk about your savvy moves. Green Day was in the impossible position of trying to follow-up its career-boosting (some would say career-defining) opus American Idiot, and they decided to completely abandon their celebrity, at least temporarily, and put out a record under a fake name, the Foxboro Hot Tubs.

The resulting album is a retro-cool blast of '60s garage-rock sounds. The only way one would think it's Green Day on first listen is Billie Joe Armstrong's unmistakable voice. But the music ranges from slash-and-burn, distorted guitar rockers ("Broadway," the title track) to psychedelic workouts ("Red Tide") to power-pop excursions that would sound at home on any British Invasion comp you might buy ("Mother Mary," "Ruby Room").

Here's a little taste, via someone's homemade YouTube clip, of Foxboro Hot Tubs doing "Mother Mary:"

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