First Night: REM, Olympia Theatre, Dublin

Most bands, when they get to REM's stature, don't even consider touring if they don't have an album to promote; and when they do get round to treading the boards again, they make sure that every note and syllable of their new work is completely sorted, and rehearsed down to the final bar of the final encore.

Not so REM. Reportedly disappointed with the patchy reaction to their last album, Around the Sun, they've opted to turn the whole record/tour schedule on its head by bringing their new material to Dublin - home of their current producer, Jacknife Lee - for five nights of Live Rehearsal Shows in the red rococo surroundings of the Olympia Theatre.

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The rationale is simple: rather than wait until the album's release-date to discover that the songs on which they've lavished so much care and attention, and in which they're investing so many hopes, don't draw the same reaction from an audience, why not run them by the audience first, then tailor them accordingly to the response? After all, it's what Hollywood has been doing with movies for decades now - and it's not as if they'll have to change the ending, or anything.

Well, not in most cases, anyway. In the space following one new track, "Disguised", guitarist Peter Buck can be heard proposing changes to its ending, drawing bassist Mike Mills, drummer Bill Rieflin and second guitarist Scott McCaughey into a discussion which eventually results in them replaying the song's finale again in the new manner he suggests. He's right: it's much tidier, so he takes an ironic little bow as the crowd applauds again.

It's the kind of unplanned tangent that bands would usually rather die than experience, and certainly not the kind of thing a paying audience would normally accept; but it's exactly what this crowd, in this city, wants to be a part of - literally, watching one of the world's top bands rehearsing right in front of them, being present as a fundamental change is made to one of their new songs. Top craic, indeed!

With a pleasing accidental symmetry, "Disguised" had already been treated to two beginnings, too, as Michael Stipe fluffed the timing of the song's intro, swiftly bringing it to a stop, then corpsing with laughter as the sharp-eared lighting technician flashed up the phrase "This Is Not A Show", which had been projected on the backdrop before the band took the stage. Virtually subliminal - blink and you'd miss it - it caught Stipe's eye and reduced him to tears of hilarity, much to his bandmates' evident bemusement.

As with many of the new songs, the musician's legs-akimbo stance on "Disguised" reflects the generally heavier nature of their current style.

Stipe had introduced the show as "this experiment in terror for ourselves", explaining that the songs were still very much works-in-progress, and that indeed, "in one case, we don't have a chorus - you'll hear it soon!". Perhaps it's the one called "Mr Richards", which sounds like a Fables Of The Reconstruction outtake re-routed through the Velvet Underground and zapped with a thousand watts of energy. Or maybe it's "Houston", a short piece for which Mike Mills switches to organ and Buck straps on an acoustic guitar. But it's probably not "On The Fly", one of the better-developed songs, for which McCaughey takes to pedal steel, drummer Bill Rieflin switches between sticks and furry mallets, and Buck plays one of a seemingly endless collection of electric 12-string guitars.

The one song that it certainly doesn't refer to is that which was erroneously included on the commemorative T-shirt set-list, which Stipe explains had to be pulled from the set when it was revealed to him that the chorus he had been so pleased with was, in fact, the same chorus to the TV show Friends. Not that this would have bothered the Dublin audience: REM were there for them, and they were there for REM, too.