R.E.M. - Reckoning (Deluxe Edition)
by Kevin Wierzbicki
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With few exceptions the punk scene that had been roaring for nearly a decade was all but dead by the mid 1980s and young hip ears were searching for something new to get excited about. They found it emanating from college town nightclubs across the American southland, most notably in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia where groups like Let's Active, Pylon and the dB's suddenly found themselves standing in the national spotlight. The entire movement was lumped into a genre called "the Athens sound," mostly because the big dogs of the scene, R.E.M., hailed from that city. History has proven that the critics and the fans were right to choose R.E.M. as the darlings of the day and there was plenty to be found in Reckoning, the band's second album and third release overall, to foretell the coming decades of success. The album was full of jangle pop gems like "Pretty Persuasion" and "So. Central Rain," often mashed-up with folksier sounds on tunes like "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville." Reckoning today still stands as one of the high-water marks of the era; unfortunately the bonus material included in this deluxe edition does not. The bonus disc here holds a previously unreleased concert recorded at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom in 1984 that features most of Reckoning along with takes on "Radio Free Europe" and a couple songs that were at the time not yet committed to wax; "Hyena" and "Driver 8." Musically the performance is very good but the whole thing sounds dated; if you want to listen for the purpose of reminiscing it's best to stick with the studio disc.
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R.E.M. - Reckoning (Deluxe Edition)
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