R.E.M. won't tour with new album

R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck doesn't believe the band should have to tour to sell their new album.

The musician revealed that the 'Losing My Religion' hitmakers have no plans to play a series of concerts to promote their latest album 'Collapse Into Now' despite not touring since releasing 'Accelerate' in 2008.

He said: "I'm not really sure that touring sells records. What sells records anymore? It seems like less and less people are buying albums, so do what you want.

"We'll just see what happens. But it does seem like we've toured a lot in the last eight or ten years. To some degree it felt like we'd just been doing kind of the same thing we did last time. You just don't really want to repeat yourself in that way."

Peter - who founded the group with lead singer Michael Stipe, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry in 1980 - also revealed that fans should expect a return to the group's original sound on their latest record.

He explained to Beatweek magazine: "You're always working against your past. We'd made a couple records that were mid tempo to slow.

"This time around we were all trying to bring in different kinds of stuff and capture some of the things that maybe we'd done in the past that we hadn't revisited, the kind of acoustic stuff which I've been playing more or less folk music since I was fifteen."

'Collapse Into Now' was released in the UK yesterday (07.03.11) and North America today (08.03.11).