Does it bug you when a certain band puts out a certain CD, and all the press about it keeps hammering on a specific point… and then the band’s next record comes out, and all the press and PR hammers home a precisely opposite one? Generally, it’s a variant of “It’s a return to the band in top rock ‘n’ roll form!”

How many times have I heard, “We wanted to put out a U2 record that didn’t sound like a U2 record” or somesuch, followed two years later with “We really felt like the fans deserved a U2 record”?

It happens for three reasons. One, readers and fans seem to like it—it makes for easily digestible data that can be readily repeated in social situations, and it doesn’t require any pesky critical thinking. Two, it’s part of the PR strategy the band and its handlers had cooked up for that particular CD/tour/live DVD promotional endeavor.

The third reason is the complicity of the press, which gets forgotten sometimes. Consider Michael Stipe in an interview on Pitchfork. He’s talking about precisely this issue; for R.E.M., in 2008, it involves Around the Sun, the group’s last album, which wasn’t considered successful, in the context of the new one, Accelerate, which from the title to the first, riff-laden single, is designed to show off an R.E.M. in, er, top rock ’n’ roll form. (See also Green [1988] and Monster [1994].)

Stipe and Pitchfork then go on at length to discuss how and why this all happens, in their usual intelligent fashion, which at once manages to play into these patterns and put them in context:

Pitchfork: A lot of people have remarked on the punchiness and conciseness of the album. Is that a reaction to Around the Sun?

[Michael Stipe]: You’re going to read that over and over again, and we freely admit that we lost focus on the last record. But we also say, and people tend to downplay this part, I really like the material on that record. I think the songs are great. It’s just the way we approached them in the studio that really I don’t think made them shine as much as they might have. And whatever steps we’ve taken, I’m not going to badmouth any of the work that we’ve done, but I’m also not deluded about it. It’s not as much of a reaction as reporters who we’ve sat at a table face to face with… Everyone comes into an interview situation with their own story and their own idea and then they cherrypick the comments that help create their argument. And so I think for the band members it’s not as much a reaction to the last record as you might read. It’s simply that we all realize that we had lost focus, and we did the most obvious thing, which is to write really fast songs that are really in your face and kind of raw.

Pitchfork: That whole “reaction” line seems to be an easy story to sell.

MS: Yeah, it’s a fine story. It’s not exactly accurate, is what I’m saying.

Except .. it is.