October 3, 1998

London W1 Broadcasting House

There are no enigmatic silences any more, no gnomic utterances that ironise the patronising relationship between frontman and fans...

It's alright, there's nothing to be afraid of. When Peter Buck walks on to a tiny stage more used to holding contestants in arcane Radio 4 panel games, straps on a mandolin and begins the warm, familiar, hopelessly beautiful chords of 'Losing My Religion', you can almost hear the sighs of relief reverberating around the country.

For tonight is all about reassuring a nation of fans listening live on Radio 1 that, despite Bill Berry's departure and new album 'Up''s much-vaunted and somewhat exaggerated 'experimental' nature, little has really changed with REM. Strip away the click and buzz of drum machines and samplers, place the new songs in the context of an unravelling pantheon that includes 'Man On The Moon', 'Country Feedback' and even 1983's 'Perfect Circle', and the idea of a radical shift suddenly seems utterly fanciful.

What really separates much of 'Up' from its predecessors is a certain understatement, a regular swerve away from the obvious moves and bigger gestures REM might have succumbed to in the past. Needless to say, it's fascinating to watch an older, mellower band at such close quarters and grasp how transparently happier they are before a tiny invited audience, rather than cloaked in artifice and facing tens of thousands in some desolate stadium. 'Up' songs demand the intimacy. Check the pristine Beach Boys miniatures 'Parakeet' and 'At My Most Beautiful': Mike Mills pounding away on electric piano like an unnervingly sane Brian Wilson, then joining in shivering falsetto harmonies with long-time band associate Scott McCaughey and former Posies man Ken Stringfellow. Pastiches, sure, but fabulous ones nonetheless.

Perhaps Berry leaving the band, rather than allowing REM to indulge their more outre inclinations, has actually galvanised Buck, Mills and Stipe into a more concerted, user-friendly package that's prepared to roll across Europe playing showcases like this, locking into a dense sequence of interviews, even entering the belly of the beast that is TFI Friday. You sense a fresh start has given them the courage to try and become detached from the obliqueness that their oldest fans continue to demand. Hence the new policy of - relative - openness that sees the new album's coy, pretty lyrics printed for the first time, and the determinedly relaxed Michael Stipe that confronts us in glitter make-up and accessorised stubble.

There are no enigmatic silences any more, no gnomic utterances that ironise the patronising relationship between frontman and fans. Instead of arch manipulator, Stipe is glowing: camp and chatty, calling himself a "conscientious, '90s kinda hippy guy" and claiming make-up, "just makes me feel more confident. I look great, right?" And for the grand finale? "I just did that thing where you throw up in your mouth and you have to swallow," he announces, knowingly cute.

Maybe easy-going candour is his latest affectation. There are traces of the old mystique, though, as he sits meditating before Joey Waronker's drum riser at the start of 'Country Feedback', concentrating on the looping, whinnying pedal steel of big-boy rock's ubiquitous authenticity accessory, BJ Cole. For 'New Test Leper', he's self-consciously gone: waggling fingers tracing raindrop trajectories down his chest, eyes fixed on some obscure point of beauty on the theatre ceiling, gasping for breath as if in some ecstatic convulsion. Once again, it's OK: the spirit's still with them.

This is what REM do. All their declamations of change, their constant horror of being pinned down, categorised, sussed out, can't detract from the fact they can never completely escape their own staggering musical heritage. That the knack of writing magical modern American folk songs continues to prevail, no matter how many modishly alienated FX are layered into the background. At least they can take some perverse consolation from the fact that tonight's most euphoric song, 'Man On The Moon', is the only one they play from that alleged touchstone of misery, 'Automatic For The People'. Stipe's beaming now, dancing, leading the crowd on, the taste of vomit doubtless lingering round his tastebuds. A true, blessed professional, just taking care of the old business one more time.