Michael Stipe sang,”It’s the end of the world as we know it” in 1987.

It wasn’t, but the 1992 masterpiece “Automatic For The People” should have been called “It’s the end of R.E.M. as we know it.”

What happened to the favorite sons of ‘80s college radio, who grew into the most important American band of that decade? Where are Mike Mills’ harmonies, Stipe’s bellowing voice and Peter Buck’s jangly experimentation?

The trio has outgrown the band that has defined the Athens, Ga. natives for more than 20 years. R.E.M. hasn’t grown up; they’ve grown old.

Stipe spends most of his days producing films. Buck, the band’s primary songwriter, now writes most of his tunes for his side project, The Minus 5.

Their maudlin 13th release is their least-direct effort. Teetering between boring, melodrama and dark, try-too-hard tales of isolation, the 13 songs come across as a lackluster attempt by a band that went back to the studio and gave things another go-round in order to stay fresh and relevant. There even is a duet with Q-Tip.

In fact, the only relevance “Around The Sun” has is to the story of Icarus.