Reckoning (CD - 1984)

Recorded at Reflection Sound, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Personnel: Bill Berry (vocals, drums, percussion); Michael Stipe, Mike Mills (vocals); Peter Buck (guitar).

Audio Mixer: Mitch Easter.

Recording information: Reflection Sound Studios, Charlotte, NC.

Photographers: Ed Colver; Mike Cameron.

Unknown Contributor Role: Howard Finster.

The murmuring continued with this, R.E.M.'s second album, recorded in only two weeks, and yet critical acclaim and a growing fanbase had not made the music any less elusive. From the cover depiction of a winding river/snake, the jangly music within was similarly ambiguous, drenched in alternately murky, then dazzlingly clear, images. The water theme predominates throughout side one's five-song suite, with talk of harbours, oceans and water towers, crowned by the sublime lament of "So. Central Rain." Later, the melancholic eulogy of "Camera" sits comfortably beside the cod-country of "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" and the brisk but disillusioned tour around "Little America." An astonishingly assured and uncommercial half-sibling to MURMUR: file under water. minimize