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Reckoning

Certain Songs #1704: R.E.M. – “(don’t Go back TO) ROCKVILLE”

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Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984

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As the follow up the slow burn of “camerA” deep on the R side of Reckoning, you might have expected “(don’t Go back TO) ROCKVILLE” to go back to the more uptempo rockers that had dominated the record. But instead, R.E.M. gave us a left turn, with the most anomalous song on the whole record.

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Certain Songs #1703: R.E.M. – “camerA”

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Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984

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File Under Remember

Out of all of the songs of Reckoning, “camerA” was initially the most difficult for me to grok at first. After all, not only was it a slow one, it was well over five minutes, and kinda sad-sounding to boot, a bit jarring when compared to the mostly up-tempo rockers that dominated Reckoning.

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Certain Songs #1702: R.E.M. – “letter Never seNt”

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Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984

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File Under Heaven

Let’s talk about Bill Berry for a minute.

In a lot of ways, he was R.E.M.’s secret weapon, not just as a songwriter — though he wrote songs as great as “Perfect Circle,” “Driver 8” and “Man on The Moon” — but as a smart, powerful drummer. From the very beginning, his sick beats were utterly integral to R.E.M.’s music, and while in one of the books I read, dB’s drummer Will Rigby dissed him for having super simple kick drum parts, I would argue that was part of the appeal: he was always driving even the folkiest songs forward.

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Certain Songs #1701: R.E.M. – “Time After Time (annElise)”

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Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984

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File Under Follow

“Time After Time (annElise)” just might be my favorite R.E.M. song.

At the very least, it’s probably my most favorite song on Reckoning, which puts me at odds with one of my most favorite R.E.M. fans, Stephen Malkmus, who in Pavement’s awesome paean to early R.E.M., “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence” famously screeched “‘Time After Time’ was my LEAST favorite song!”

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Certain Songs #1700: R.E.M. – “Pretty Persuasion”

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Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984

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File Under Confusion

While “Pretty Persuasion” might not be the best R.E.M. song, it’s probably the most R.E.M. song, a absolute microcosm of what made them so great, and — more importantly — what made so many young people decide not just to listen to these kind of songs, but to go out and make their own versions of the these kind of songs.

Find some friends, grab a couple of guitars, designate a bassist, play at the drummers house. Jingle jangle jingle. Jangle jingle jangle. It didn’t even matter if you were as great as R.E.M., because R.E.M. didn’t really seem as great as R.E.M., either. The point was that anybody could do it; the original point of punk rock before it got all codified into the eternal arguments about what was and wasn’t punk.

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Certain Songs #1699: R.E.M. – “HarborcOat”

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Album: Reckoning
Year: 1984

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File Under R-E-A-C-T

How do you follow up an album like Murmur? How do you follow up one of the greatest debut albums of all time?

In R.E.M.’s case, they decided to take their next batch of songs, walk into Reflection Sound Studios and just bang ’em out, wham wham wham! And so Reckoning was straightforward where Murmur was elusive, effusive where Murmur was reflective and — to me, at least — was kind of ground zero for their sound, especially in concert, where they were always far more rockin’.

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