Accelerate arrives in 2008 as the first studio album in four years from R.E.M. and it finds modern rock's most acclaimed band returning to the stripped down, guitar-driven power that first enraptured fans. Helmed by the band and, for the first time, Jacknife Lee, Accelerate puts the 2007 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame group once again firmly behind the wheel of alternative rock, a genre R.E.M. helped invent.