Search - Rem :: Reckonong

Great Chemistry, Great Album

Maggie Mae | Reno, Nevada | 04/22/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album was another great release in the same style as Murmur. R.E.M. at this point had established themselves in the music circuit with their jangly Rickenbacher guitars along with singer Michael Stipes' sweet, yet slightly muffled vocals. Not to forget the other members who make R.E.M.-Billy Berry with his hard hitting sturdy drumming amd the melodic bass of Mike Mills.



This release is a bit tighter and stronger than their first as heard on "Harbercoat" and "7 Chinese Bros.", because of it's overall meatier rhythm. Then it has "So. Central Rain", a mournful moody ballad about a love lost. which we all have experienced. The song "Pretty Persuasion" delivers in a big, hard hitting way as a perfect rock song. Overall the band still doesn't disappoint, with each song on this album proving their great chemistry and excellent songwriting abilities."

Don't waste another year

Tim Brough | Springfield, PA United States | 11/22/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The second album from R.E.M.'s IRS years was a logical step forward from the stunning Murmur. Touring incessantly had stripped the band of some of their murky atmospherics, towards a cleaner sound. Not like Michael Stipe was becoming Paul McCartney; the vocals were still often undecipherable. But Peter Buck had become an inauspicious Guitar God, making his Rickenbacker ring like vintage Roger McGuinn. There are moments on "Reckoning" that sounds like they were time-ported from 1967 ("Camera" "Time After Time").



R.E.M. had not yet found their inner-rockstars, so the ambiguous sounds and easy pace was still here. "Seven Chinese Brothers" and "Don't Go Back To Rockville" find the band flirting with alt-country, while "Little America" offers a preview of more rocking songs to come. This is also the "garagiest" of R.E.M.'s early albums, as the follow-up's, Fables of the Reconstruction and Lifes Rich Pageant, began moving into darker territory. "Reckoning" is not the stone classic that "Murmur" is, but it ranks up their with the best work the band has done."

Reckon this is excellent.

DjC | San Leandro, California United States | 11/29/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Compared to the murky, modern sound of Murmur, this, R.E.M.'s second album, was a more straight-forward approach, something of a folk rock album with its jangly guitar-driven sound. Just as with Murmur, the lyrics draw repeated listening to fathom their meaning, as with "7 Chinese Brothers" (..."Seven Chinese brothers swallowing the ocean..."), and they inspire, as with "Letter Never Sent" (..."Heaven is yours, heaven is yours, heaven is yours where I may live...". But the lyrics are more focused, some like stories, even with a little country thrown in, as in "So. Central Rain" and "Don't Go Back to Rockville," which perhaps hinted at the direction of the next album, "Fables of the Reconstruction." Stipe's delivery is still understated, not the clearly enunciated rendering that would begin with the album Document, but it's part of what made the songs in this early period so enigmatic--I almost wish they would go back to that style yet still somehow make it new.



Just about all the songs are great, and the three or four that aren't great are still quite good.



Do not miss it."