The first thing you notice when chatting with erstwhile R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills about the band's seemingly sudden break up in September and the new career-spanning retrospective, "Part Lies, Part Garbage, Part Truth 1982-2011" being released Nov. 15, is that when Mills talks about the group, he often still talks about it in the present tense. ( R.E.M. is... R.E.M. does...) Thirty-one-year-old habits are hard to break, but as the 37 favorites (from 1983's "Radio Free Europe" through 1991 "Losing My Religion" into 2008s "Supernatural Superserious") and ostensibly the band's last three new songs ("A Month Of Saturdays," "Hallelujah" and "We All Go Back To Where We Belong") attest, a great band can end but the music is always here and now. On the eve of the retrospective's release, Mills discusses the album, why farewell tours are manipulative, the end of R.E.M., and the future of its members. Will he miss it? "Who knows?," he says, but "The feeling right now is not sadness."

When was the centerpiece of the three new songs, "We All Go Back To Where We Belong," written?

As with all R.E.M. songs, guitarist Peter [Buck] and I write the music and Michael [Stipe] writes the lyrics. That's our division of labor. Some songs come out really quickly and some take a lot of work. This one was actually written on piano for [2011's] "Collapse Into Now." It didn't get finished and I liked it enough that I wanted to try to work it into the retrospective. So I rewrote it and played it on guitar instead of piano. Once I got the piano off of it, Michael was re-inspired by it and found it easier to write to on guitar than piano. So we have a different song.

It actually sounds like a bittersweet coda of sorts, among the last three REM songs. Did that go into your thinking at least musically?

I think "Hallelujah" and "Where We All Go Back To Where We Belong" were written with the break up in mind. I'm not sure "A Month of Saturdays" was, but it applies in a really cool way. First of all, lyrically, like, "hey we don't work at the same job any more." But also the three songs sort of show the three sides of REM over the years. There's the playful goofy side, "Saturdays." Then there's the harder-edged 6/4 time "Hallelujah" that we write. And then there's the soft, wistful midtempo ballad that we do. It's three facets of R.E.M. in 2011 that are extremely well represented. You know, it's still us. There are threads that have run through all 31 years and then there are changes that have happened as well.

Were you working on the retrospective before you decided finally to set a date for breaking up?

We knew there would be some sort of greatest hits type thing but we didn't really start working on that until after "Collapse Into Now." But we did know we were breaking up before then. We started talking about it on the '08 tour. [We said,] 'We've got some decisions to make in a couple of years. What are we gonna do?' And as we talked about it, we all realized that we'd independently all came up with the idea that calling it a day was the best idea.

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I thought in 2008 you seemed really reinvigorated live. Considering that, it was curious that with "Collapse Into Now," which was well received, you didn't tour.  I wonder, if knowing in the back of your mind that you would break up soon, that you had already put being a live entity behind you.

There were several reasons that we decided not to tour. But certainly the biggest was that you don't want to do a farewell tour. It's kinda maudlin and mawkish. It would be really weird to go out there singing these songs knowing it's the last time you'll ever sing them. It just seemed a little manipulative and sentimental. And that's not really the way R.E.M. does things.

It seemed a little counterintuitive to announce the break up before the retrospective. What went into that?

The timing of the announcement didn't have much to do with the retrospective at all. Once we had decided to do it, we wanted to make sure that everything was taken care of for the people that were going to be most influenced by this, which is the people that worked in our office. We wanted to get the news out there as quickly as possible so that we could announce it ourselves instead of have it dribble out on the internet. But you have to get all your ducks in a row before you can make that kind of announcement. It was a really nice synergy that we were doing this retrospective at roughly the same time.

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Did you, Michael, and Peter talk to [founding R.E.M. drummer] Bill Berry before you make the final decision to break up, or before you made the final announcement?

We called him before we announced it. I gave him a call to let him know we were doing it. You know, Bill's retired from the band and has been for 14 years. He's really not involved in the day to day activities, but certainly we gave him a heads up before we announced it publicly.

What did he think?

I think he was sad. You know, it's bittersweet for all of us. So, he respects our decision as we respected his. He thinks we did it the right way as do we. So he's fine.

NEXT: What He'll Miss, Future Projects, R.E.M. 'Chestnuts' Waiting to Be Found