In almost ten years of writing music reviews for The Daily Vault, I\u2019ve mentioned the \u201csophomore slump\u201d more times than I care to count. This refers to the pressure that an artist or band faces when working on their second album, especially when the first album was a hit. The resulting pressure and expectations usually ends up in a disappointing second release.<\/p>\n
Someone obviously never told Michael Stipe and R.E.M. about the \u201csophomore slump,\u201d since Reckoning<\/i>, their second full-length release, was a major improvement over their debut effort Murmur<\/i> — itself a decent effort.<\/p>\n
This disc is possibly best known for two singles, \u201cSo. Central Rain (I\u2019m Sorry)\u201d and \u201c(Don\u2019t Go Back To) Rockville,\u201d and while these tracks are truly enjoyable, it\u2019s interesting to note that they\u2019re not the best on the disc. (When\u2019s the last time you heard that<\/i> as a complaint, eh?)<\/p>\n
Take, for example, \u201cPretty Persuasion,\u201d a peppy little number whose use of the term \u201cGod damn\u201d kept this one off the airwaves. Too bad, \u2018cause this one could have easily been the track that turned R.E.M. into superstars a couple of years before Document<\/i>. Likewise, \u201cHarborcoat,\u201d \u201cCamera\u201d and \u201cLittle America\u201d are tracks that are just begging to be re-discovered.<\/p>\n
Reckoning<\/i> finds R.E.M. — vocalist Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry \u2013 becoming more comfortable in their musical skin, and expanding on the roads they first started plowing on Murmur<\/i>. If \u201cPerfect Circles\u201d on Murmur<\/i> showed R.E.M.\u2019s ability to do ballads, then \u201cTime After Time (Annelise)\u201d not only hammers it home, but makes it sound as natural as breathing. Likewise, tracks like \u201c7 Chinese Brothers\u201d and \u201cLetter Never Sent\u201d allow the band to push the envelope of their own style of alternative rock, never sounding like the progression was forced.<\/p>\n
In fact, I\u2019d be hard-pressed to say there is a single bad track on Reckoning<\/i> — though it doesn\u2019t quite have the edge it did when it first came out 22 years ago. That\u2019s not a criticism of R.E.M. — I defy anyone to find an album nearly a quarter-century old that sounds as edgy today as it did back then \u2013 but it is a tad off-putting at times. But it is kind of weird listening to \u201cSo. Central Rain\u201d today and trying to think back to when I was in college radio \u2013 hell, even that<\/i> was five years after this disc came out — trying to compare the 12-string work of Buck to that of Roger McGuinn and wondering if this might have been how The Byrds would have sounded in the \u201880s.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the interesting thing about Reckoning<\/i> — namely, it leaves me wondering why this has become one of the forgotten discs in R.E.M.\u2019s discography. (In all fairness, almost everything prior to Document<\/i> falls into the same category — each its own travesty, in my opinion.) Yeah, it might not have been a commercial blockbuster, but this disc definitely showcases a band maturing as songwriters and performers, and obviously making all the right decisions in those regards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5748],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-39873","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-r-e-m","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39873"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39873"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}