The term "college rock" was coined to describe REM and, though college may be a distant memory for the Georgia trio, they still symbolise youthful idealism.
The image has kept them afloat through five years of increasingly unfashionable albums and a strictly capitalist $80m record deal. It also helped them stuff Earl's Court for two nights, which may have been a step down from the stadiums of their '94 tour, but proves they're still major players.
The roof over their heads was a boon for the crowd, enabling them to enjoy their pasta e funghi free of airborne debris. The pasta said a great deal about the sort of band REM have become: a softly-lit complement to thirty-something lifestyles, much as Dire Straits were to the previous generation. Michael Stipe has yet to try a headband, but the parallel must be obvious even to them. Hence, all they needed to do here was to sound like the albums.
Specifically, like Out of Time and Automatic for the People, the 17m-selling pair that made REM synonymous with white male angst-or-was-it-just-a-bad-hair-day. The elaborate neon sculp tures that brought downtown Tokyo to west London were a nice touch, but people were there mainly to recall moments in their own lives that were sound-tracked by the love-splintered likes of Losing My Religion (the biggest on-your-feet number by a long way).
Stipe, crunchy guitarist Peter Buck and Mike Mills did what had to be done, and did it with some zest. This despite zero charisma from Stipe, who used the show as a message board for his buddies: "This next one is for Jonathan, and can he come backstage afterwards?" What he lacked in star quality he made up in gusto, pouring attitude into "really, really old" rockers like Driver 8 as if they were newborns. Genuinely new ones from last year's Up album - Lotus, the Southern Gothic show-opener; At My Most Beautiful, silkified with Beach Boys harmonies - received fiery readings that stopped forkfuls of pasta in mid-bite.
REM are more celebrated for their records than their gigs. Yet by the time they had filleted New Test Leper, Buck transforming an ambling romp into something sleek and mean, it seemed it should be the other way around.
That was only a few songs in, and another dozen followed, most of them as rocking as a bar band from Athens, Georgia, could render them. Rocking didn't necessarily mean exciting. This was still a group who could debate the merits of a decent Chardonnay. But music has meaning for them yet.
