Condition: Brand New Ships from: Melbourne

• Description
• Release details
• Tracklist

• Reckoning, released in 1984, is R.E.M.s second studio album and a bold step forward from their debut Murmur. Recorded at Reflection Sound Studio in Charlotte, North Carolina over December 1983 to January 1984, the band and producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon aimed to capture a live immediacy while allowing for more clarity and definition in the songs. The album leans into bright, chiming guitars, taut rhythm sections, and Michael Stipes evocative, sometimes cryptic vocals. Themes of water, transition, and longing echo through tracks like Harborcoat, Pretty Persuasion, and Camera, weaving emotional currents under R.E.M.s signature jangle-pop framework. As a follow-up to Murmur, Reckoning helped solidify the bands early identity: melodic, mysterious, and earnest. The album served to deepen their presence in college-radio circuits while reaching beyond underground acclaim. Its balance of accessible hooks and lyrical ambiguity has allowed it to age gracefully, influencing many alternative and indie acts that followed. Over decades, Reckoning is often celebrated as a pivotal early chapter in R.E.M.s evolutiona record where the seeds of their later success become visible without sacrificing the mysteriousness that always defined them.

  Reviews

  The overall sound is crisper, the lyrics far more comprehensible R.E.M.s music is able to involve the listener on both an emotional and intellectual level. Christopher Connelly, Rolling Stone

  Reckoning confirms R.E.M. as one of the most beautifully exciting groups on the planet. NME

  Review

  AllMusic rating: AllMusic users: (3,474 votes) Read the AllMusic.com review

• Artist: R.E.M. Label: I.R.S. Records, UMe Format: LP Units: 1 Country: US Genre: Pop & Rock Style: Indie Rock

• L1 Harborcoat
  L2 7 Chinese Bros.
  L3 So. Central Rain
  L4 Pretty Persuasion
  L5 Time After Time (Annelise)
  R1 Second Guessing
  R2 Letter Never Sent
  R3 Camera
  R4 (Don’T Go Back To) Rockville
  R5 Little America