Music Mondays: R.E.M. and Moby

In my music column today, I reviewed new albums from R.E.M., Moby and Van Morrison.

I couldn’t find many songs to link to from Van Morrison’s latest album, which I found dull anyway. But hey, Van the Man’s got some songs up on his MySpace page, so if you’re really interested, go over there.

Oh, and also, the entire R.E.M. can be heard here, if you just want to scope the whole damn thing out. (Those songs may be removed by April 1, so hurry.)

Here are a couple of my favorites from the Moby and R.E.M. records. Click on the song name to hear it, or the album name to buy the CD.

R.E.M., “Accelerate”

“Living Well Is The Best Revenge” — This song just goes shooting out of the gate, a lot like some of the band’s other famous lead songs, including “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?” and “Begin the Begin.”

“Accelerate” — The word “accelerate” already is pretty cool, as words go, but R.E.M. soups it up with some backing vocals from — who, Mike Mills? — the group near the end of this song.

“Supernatural Superserious” — This is a pretty good lead single with a very good title.

Moby, “Last Night”

“Alice” — Moby’s ready to dance on this, with its verses rapped and it’s chorus seemingly sung by the bald electronica artist himself.

“Disco Lies” — If “Alice” comes off as a bit of an angry-dance song, this one, despite it’s talk of lies, comes off as significantly more upbeat. And yeah, it’s pretty disco-y.