What keeps R.E.M. so consistent is not just their clear instrumental talent or the lyrical strengths of their album material, but the creative control. More artists must fight for that now, especially in the streamlined pop days of the modern world. Reckoning showcases just how much R.E.M. were willing to change their sound. The more things changed around the core group members, the more they stayed the same. It’s a band of many variables, but the fundamentals are maintained with the same care as those fragile, new sounds which feature on Reckoning. A worthy follow-up to a fantastic debut, Murmur. Crucial to this is in writing with the freedom and frequency which comes when passionate about your work. Be it piecing together albums in the 1980s or reflecting on them decades later, a sincerity at the core of the process is what matters most. It does for Reckoning, an album that could have been a double album had Peter Buck gotten his way, but then that may have been surplus to requirement for R.E.M.’s sound at the time.
Michael Stipe and the rest of R.E.M. had certainly worked on enough strong material at the time, though a double album just two years on from your debut is ambitious to say the least. It’d also have been a poor move, potentially drowning out the immaculate songs found on Reckoning. Opener Harborcoat is a delight, that fine line between the Shiny Happy People beat the band would feature on later releases and the fluid writing style Stipe so often brings to the table. 7 Chinese Bros. gives the band an expansion of that sound, and it works wonderfully. So much is packed into this second album from R.E.M., the style the band had set out to make is as clear as can be, and the fact they push out the likes of So. Central Rain while also defying their label’s wishes is fantastic. A hearty song that doesn’t exactly scratch the typical commercial itch. Releasing it as a single for Reckoning is as powerful as the song itself.
Atmosphere was everything for Murmur, and while Reckoning still has plenty of that, it doesn’t have the same shock factor to it. R.E.M. had proven themselves as essential creatives on their first go around and continue to show why they were a must-listen act with Reckoning. That is in of itself an achievement, though there is a jangle pop reliance that pales when compared to what else was released at the time. Songs like Pretty Persuasion are nice but feel more reliant on the vocal interjections and the harmonising, than anything else. Time After Time (Annelise) hopes to find beauty in repetition, and it’s an honest attempt at it. Solid enough and the instrumental flow, that inevitable fade into nothing which signals the end of the song, is a predictable but promising piece of work from R.E.M. here.
Songs of second guesses, of hoping that, in the long run, things work out, are what dominates Reckoning. That sound is not a marketable one, much to the delight of the band it found a respectable audience, nonetheless. (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville and Little America are excellent as a continuation of the sincerity found in the band. That much is crucial not just in the early years to prove to a listener the band is being as honest as possible, but in the decades to come when people look back on an album like Reckoning and wonder if the band held it together. They did, and that honesty runs through Stipe’s lyrical choices, the process of his writing more an opportunity to provoke feeling rather than evoke it. It’ll work for some more than others on Reckoning, but what’s undeniable is the sweet, swaying style it still has.
