R.E.M. Will Revisit 'Early Days' On Summer Tour

After delighting fans with rarities such as "Second Guessing" and "Animal"
at its performances thus far this year, R.E.M. is promising to dig further
into its vaults for its return to the road on May 23rd.

"[For] the last Dublin shows [in June and July 2007], we went back and
learned a whole bunch of stuff from the early days we hadn't played in a
long time, just to see where we came from, and it was pretty inspiring to
play those," guitarist Peter Buck said.

Regarding upcoming dates, Buck says, "We're obviously going to play the
new record ['Accelerate']; we've been playing nine songs off it, which is
28 minutes or something, so there's a lot of space for us to do stuff from
all through our career."

The early material the band has been dipping into is in keeping with the
harder-rocking nature of "Accelerate," which debuted at No. 2 on the
Billboard 200 (and No. 1 in the U.K.) in April. Buck says that playing
songs from 2004's commercially disappointing "Around the Sun" live, in
fact, helped steer the direction of the new set.