After paying a visit to friend and REM bassist Mike Mills' Paris home and hearing rough recordings of the band's new material, The Posies frontman Ken Stringfellow has describe the sound of the new album as "old school".
Speaking to NME, the guitarist and singer said, "It's sounding really great, very old school. The first track had vocals which were mixed super low which I couldn't understand and I was like, 'Yes, a return to form.' Mike was on about pushing the vocals up and I was like, 'No, don't do it.'"
A slightly odd comment to make considering REM's sound has remain relatively consistent over the course of their three decade career. Strange too to describe it as a "return to form", considering the band's last album, 2008's 'Accelerate' was also described by many critics as just that.
Stringfellow continued, "What's cool about classic REM is that you have an electric and acoustic guitar coming along like The Byrds ... There's a lot of that in there, there's some piano songs too, but I didn't hear a lot of crazy, freaky keyboards and vintage drum machines in there like the period when I was with them ... It had a very live feel. It's really quite beautiful, some of the recordings were a little bit dark and had just the kind of murk that you would hear on an old REM record. I thought that was a great thing to bring back."
REM are still working on the yet to be titled album, their fifteenth overall, with 'Accelerate' producer Jacknife Lee. It is slated for a 2011 release.