Imagine the scenario. You're one of the world's most respected and acclaimed rock bands - intelligent, provocative, committed, simultaneously cerebrally oblique and a commercial act. You are just about to start rehearsals for a new record (a follow-up to an album that has, to all intents and purposes, divided your fan base by half), when a cornerstone member of the band suddenly decides to quit.
There are three options: the band can simply fall apart, thereby tearing asunder two decades of work; the band can play it safe and record an album that will easily gain them back lost ground with their fans; or the band can break free of the constraints of commerce and expectation and deliver a record that, while wildly experimental, is also as cohesive as two connecting strips of Velcro. Decisions, decisions.
REM's lead singer, Michael Stipe, is standing in a swish London hotel room. He is wearing loose-fitting clothes, thick-rimmed spectacles, and a quizzical expression. Like a weary professor, he slowly puts down the book he has just been flicking through (a photo-biography of Samuel Beckett) and awaits the usual perfunctory introduction. A question about the influence of Samuel Beckett on the collective work of REM seems unavoidable, if not downright appropriate.
"Bono told me some time back that I should take some of the theatricality of Beckett's work into our stage presentation. I loved the suggestion, and I'd read some of his work, which Bono gave me. Beckett has a strong face, and great grey hair just like Dashiel Hammett."
While many people have their own particular defined angle on REM (in general terms, they are looked upon either as the Great American Band of the past 20 years, or a jangly Americana guitar band with a wilfully dysfunctional streak running through them), thousands more have an opinion on Michael Stipe.
Stipe, the received wisdom of the masses would have us believe, is a stumbling rock singer and a mumbling, abstract lyricist. He is a Mr Enigma who talks in code. He is a contradiction in terms, in that the more quirky his persona, the more direct and emotional his writing becomes. Meeting him, talking to him, is undoubtedly a different matter. Unfailingly honest, very smart, and extraordinarily focused, Stipe is keen to demystify (demythify, even) the generic image of him which the media projects.
"It's like so much energy spent for nothing," he says, striking a match to light a hand-rolled ciggie. "I've read a couple of major articles where the writer to me was debunking the `enigma' of Michael Stipe. Then he went on in the article to make me - through the simplest act of blowing my nose or rolling my own cigarette - the absolutely most serious enigmatic person alive. You know what? That isn't the case. So there's a little weirdness out there, but I'm not complaining. I've made my bed and I'll lie on it. I garner respect from the public for whatever reason. I don't get the kind of stuff that people such as Prince gets."
Perhaps it's the lack of pretension that achieves such normal public response. Superficially, Stipe is the ultimate rarefied rock star. He peppers his conversation with references to his friends - Bono, Tori Amos, Natalie Merchant, Thom Yorke, Courtney Love ("The woman is operating on a level of intelligence higher than a combination of five smart people. I'm such a supporter.") - yet there isn't a trace of superciliousness in his tone. Celebrityhood - his or anyone else's - isn't an item of interest to him. How does he react to media scrutiny? "I have a form of defence: I'm an artist, and I can turn my back on the media and walk out of the room. I don't have to answer some questions."
Stipe has recently been reported in some areas of the media as voluntarily admitting he is homosexual. To him, this is old and misinformed news. "I've read those news reports," he says evenly, although he's clearly dismissive. "Privately, since I've been 19 years old, I always thought it was dead obvious. Not that I'm homosexual, because I'm not. I sleep with men and I sleep with women. I tend not to categorise desire or sexuality. It's a little simplistic to do that."
REM's new album, Up, comes at a time when the core band members (Peter Buck and Mike Mills complete a trio that Stipe refers to as "the son, the father, and the Holy Ghost") are putting on a brave face in the wake of the departure of drummer Bill Berry. To all intents and purposes, Up is a reaction to Berry's departure, reflecting equal degrees of chaos and liberation.
Mostly, the atmosphere of the record is depressive and spooky, somewhat akin to the hum and drone of a flickering fluorescent tube at 4 a.m. Peter Buck's guitars don't ring anymore - they flit to and fro making the kind of clanking noises you last heard while watching Eraserhead. Yet perversely - and apparently against all the odds - Up is REM's most coherent album in years. There are two songs out of whack, however: the opener, the dreadful Airportman, and the sweet single Daysleeper. The former is like nothing we have heard from the band before, while the latter is the record's most familiarly-sounding REM track.
In between and surrounding these anomalies, there is a bunch of inspiring no-tempo, lo-fi hymns. The end result is a marvellous, revealing record that embraces the future with a nod to the past. Musical reference points are the teutonic instrumental swathes of Stereolab and slowed down Kraftwerk. Stipe mentions the American electronic duo, Suicide, as another important influence. For hardline fans, such a sense of serious experimentation is only right, proper, and constructive. For fair-weather types, Airportman is enough to put them off for good.
"It's audacious, I think, to put that as the first track," says Stipe. "That song is pretty experimental. It's an easy track to skip over if you don't like it. We didn't want something that was immediately reminiscent of REM. I felt like if you're going to introduce someone into a universe that is maybe wildly different from what they're expecting, the doorway into that universe should have some indication as to what lies ahead. In a way, perhaps that song is a way of forcing - and this is where is becomes audacious - you to actually sit down and listen, and allow yourself to get irritated by it, to get curious. A song such as Airportman gives us pause for thought. If it irritates, that's good."
While Airportman is diffuse and wilfully skittish, At My Most Beautiful is the opposite. A conscious homage to "the genius of Brian Wilson" Stipe conceived the song as a gift to his colleagues. Lyrically, it's a pure love song, easily the most sincere and genuine he has written to date, and a clear sign that as he gets older his words are becoming less labyrinthine. (For fans, the printing of the lyrics on the CD sleeve is a significant event. Finally, they can sing the correct words to the songs. "Are you sure about that?" Mike Mills asks me, and to be quite honest, I'm not.)
"For months, I kept trying to write a pure love lyric, but everything I tried was distanced or sappy or cynical or clever or kitsch or cliched or cheesy. I just couldn't write a love song - it was 30 years of shitty Top 40 love songs ingrained in my head. Eventually the lyric came. To me, the song is like a bunch of haikus gathered together."
Writer's block was the result of two things: the normal working process of making a record, and the shock departure of Bill Berry.
"Not being able to write was horrible," remarks Stipe. "I don't feel sorry for myself. It's part of the process and I expect it. You hit a plateau and you feel you're never going to come out of it. But you do. It happens with every single record. With this one it happened a lot more. Bill leaving threw us into a state of chaos. Our records always represent exactly where we were at the time that we made them. This record is no exception to that. I think it's pretty cacophonic and chaotic.
"Lord knows what the next album is going to sound like. Peter and Mike have already given me music and I'm presently writing the lyrics for it. Who is to say? True REM fans expect us to stretch ourselves and rise to a challenge. I don't think any one of our fans wants to hear the same songs over a series of albums. True REM fans expect more of us, and we expect that from us as well."
REM perform on Later With Jools Holland next Friday night