R.E.M.: going out on top

It's never easy to say goodbye. It's nice, though -- in part because it's so rare -- when a band goes out on top of its game. R.E.M.'s 2011 release Collapse Into Now was among the finest albums of their 30-year career, and now they are closing things out with a trio of new recordings on their forthcoming career retrospective Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage: 1982-2011.

Not content to go quietly, though, they've released a pair of videos for their final single "We All Go Back To Where We Belong" that amount to performance art as only R.E.M. could imagine it. The one below features 3:39 of a single camera shot trained on Kirsten Dunst as she listens to the song. Her momentary flashes of self-consciousness only make the whole experience more engaging; the steady close-up allows you to literally track the subtle changes of emotion as she listens, is affected by, and reacts to the music. It's one of the simplest music videos I've ever seen, and also one of the most profound and spectacular. Here is the entire purpose of music itself -- to elicit an emotional response in the listener -- distilled into its purest form.

Alex Chilton remembered

I've never owned an album by either Alex Chilton or his ironically named group Big Star, but I was sad nonetheless to hear that he passed away the other day at 59. Not because I was a fan of his, but because I was a fan of so many other groups who proudly declared themselves his musical disciples.

From the Gin Blossoms to the Posies to R.E.M., any power-pop/guitars-and-harmonies band worth its salt in the last 30 years cited Big Star and Alex Chilton as major influences. The Replacements -- another group that many bands I like cite as an influence, even though I don't care for them -- even recorded a song called, simply, "Alex Chilton." Whether you were a fan or not, you can't deny that the man's passing is a major loss to an entire generation of musicians who followed in his rhyming, chiming, guitar-rich footsteps. R.I.P. Alex.