REM : In Time: The Best Of REM 1988-2003 The borderline between evergreen alt-rock elder statesmen and deathless careerist dinosaurs is often very hazy. REM were certainly a vital cultural force when they first signed to a major label 15 years ago after a fertile, promise-filled apprenticeship as America’s answer to The Smiths. Michael Stipe’s gangly crew virtually invented ‘alternative’ rock. When the mainstream US media wasawash with mullet-haired metal clowns, Stipe and co offered a genuine antidote to Reagan-Thatcher macho triumphalism that was intelligent, bookish, sexually ambivalent and steeped in a quasi-literary Americana. from NME