Half Off #3: Reckoning

I'm sorry, but we can keep only half of R.E.M.'s 1984 album. No second guessing. Lighted in the amber yard, a twist of color, the trees will bend. Here we are. Pull up a chair. (I think we're lost.)

Last Tuesday, April 9, was the 40th anniversary of this album.

Laura and I met on July 20, 1985, outside 30 West 21st Street in Manhattan (however, like many momentous events that have occurred in New York, there is no historic marker). Later that evening, at the Ritz on 11th Street, we got to talking about music. I was doing college radio in Vermont at the time and I’m sure R.E.M. was one of the first bands I mentioned. Laura thought the name sounded familiar. “Don’t they have a single out?” Unbeknownst to me, the annoyed look of a music snob flashed on my face for maybe 1/25th of a second. R.E.M. had, in fact, released a single: “Can’t Get There From Here”, from the just-released Fables of the Reconstruction. Fortunately, my condesending facial twitch was not held as a strike against me. We also talked about writing: Laura had very recently begun taking her life in a new, bold direction, changing jobs to better focus on writing young adult fiction. “I used to write,” I said, referring to my three-plus years as a sportswriter (ages 17-20). It was that conversation that got me writing again, this time about music.

Reckoning (1984) was R.E.M.’s third release, following Chronic Town (EP, 1982) and Murmur (LP, 1983). I was introduced to Murmur a few months after its release and was quickly mesmerized. R.E.M. made their television debut on The David Letterman Show (where all hip bands played in those days) in October 1983 — a mere 10 days before my 20th birthday. This was (and still is) a revelation.

As this clip shows — and bootlegs would confirm — R.E.M. played far more aggressively live than one might have assumed from Murmur’s more deliberate arrangements. I bought Reckoning in real time the following spring, in April 1984. What I find amazing is that there are no real duds on any of the band’s first five releases — up to and including 1986’s Lifes Rich Pageant (for my money, their best album) — yet each of those records has a sound quite different from its peers. The difference is not as stark as, say, the astonishing progression over Talking Heads’ first four albums, but still. As R.E.M. expanded its range throughout the 80s, they rarely struck a bum note.

R.E.M. was unquestionably my favourite band by the time I finally saw them live (with Laura, who flew up from New York), on Halloween night in 1986 in Burlington, Vermont. I reviewed the concert for the Burlington Free Press, the state’s main newspaper. The review — the second offering in my journalistic return, having seen the BoDeans a few weeks earlier — is nothing special, but I was pleased with the opening sentence (which I actually wrote down about a week before the show):

Critics pounded their typewriters like pulpits when R.E.M. released their debut album in 1983. Murmur, a dense menagerine of sounds, moods and mind-pictures, and its single “Radio Free Europe”, built a cult following on college campuses that has grown and threatens to make them, baring any commercial breakthrough, America’s best “unknown” band.

Prescient critic that I was . . . they did have a commercial breakthrough. They became increasingly popular over their next three albums and in 1991 “Losing My Religion” was a huge hit (both song and video). I interviewed singer Michael Stipe and drummer Bill Berry that year for a Long Island music magazine. I woke up that morning with laryngitis or dysphonia for the only time in my life. (I was able to rasp enough to converse.) I’ve always assumed it was caused by nervousness about the interview. I don’t think I knew who I would be talking to before I got to the Warner Bros. offices in Rockefeller Center. I recently found the transcript of those interviews and will post it at some point.

I did not chat with guitarist Peter Buck, sadly, though I passed him in the hallway as I was leaving. In interviews during the mid-80s, Buck assumed the role of a cool older brother tipping you off about some great new band you had to hear; at one point, he had a regular column in Record magazine. In the Free Press’ offices late on Halloween, I praised Buck’s “slashing leads”, remarking that his “gyrations and goose-stepping recall a post-punk Keith Richards”. But I was not so smitten with the band that I failed to note that the gig was “uneven in its pacing [and] the two-hour, 28-song show built too many highs that weren’t sustained”.

Lost in this chronology is the fact that this Halloween concert occurred a mere five days after my Boston Red Sox had lost the World Series to the New York Mets. Game 7 was on Monday, October 27 and R.E.M. played on Friday. Memory is strange, because those two events are not connected in my mind at all. Laura flew up from NYC via People’s Express for the Halloween weekend. We went out the next morning and got the paper, which was pretty cool. On the following Friday, I flew down to New York and we saw R.E.M. at the Felt Forum.

So. Reckoning. There are 10 songs.

Harborcoat
7 Chinese Bros.
So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)
Pretty Persuasion
Time After Time (Annelise)
Second Guessing
Letter Never Sent
Camera
(Don't Go Back To) Rockville
Little America

I used to cite “Harbourcoat” as the quintessential R.E.M. song. It showcases everything that Berry-Buck-Mills-Stipe did so well. (And one of my college radio shows — Saturdays, 3 PM — was called “Life and How to Live It”.) But the band’s recording career extended nearly a quarter-century and they made it a point to never stand still creatively. I don’t think a single song could sum up the band for me now.

Matt LeMay (Pitchfork):

[M]ore so than any other R.E.M. record, Reckoning is unified and energized by the very restlessness that has driven the band to explore so many different ideas and identities. It is this paradoxical engine of transparency and mystery that has made the band so unique . . .

My first three picks are easy. Maybe even the first four. But the last song is tough. Decades ago, the idea of leaving “Pretty Persuasion” off a list like this would have been unthinkable. Now, “Camera” and “7 Chinese Bros.” are strong contenders for the last spot, but I went with my old favourite — and yet even as I type this, I think it might be the wrong choice. Maybe I should cop out, break the rules, and go with “Voice of Harold” (which I have written about before).

Laura’s thoughts:

Reckoning is my favourite R.E.M. album, but it was surprisingly easy to remove half the songs. This is the R.E.M. I liked best — light, loose, with garbled lyrics and gorgeous harmonies. I also have an emotional attachment to this record, from when Allan introduced me to the band, when we first met and began our long-distance relationship. Those are bittersweet memories, and somehow they mesh perfectly with the sound and feel of this album. I like the whole album, but if I never heard Rockville again, that would be fine, and please stop yelling I’m Sorry.

Allan
Harbourcoat
So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)
Pretty Persuasion
Letter Never Sent
Little America

Laura
Harbourcoat
7 Chinese Bros.
Pretty Persuasion
Second Guessing
Letter Never Sent