The first thing you notice is the air, and how it pulses. It’s the mark of a irresistible album opener, the persuasive swagger passed down from “Brown Sugar” and “Baba O’Riley” to “London Calling” and “I Will Follow.” And it’s the hallmark of “Harborcoat,” the syncopation-enhanced introduction to R.E.M.’s second full-length, 1984’s Reckoning.
It’s also the mark of a quality remastering, which is what the 25-year-old Reckoning has finally received. Following R.E.M.‘s debut Murmur by a year (both when originally released in 1983 and when rereleased as a deluxe edition last year), Reckoning has received a palpable upgrade. It pushes more air than previous releases, including the 2006 I.R.S. best of, but doesn’t sound brickwalled. There’s a sense of reinvigorated presence, and of balance—the background details have become more apparent without being distractingly augmented, and the fragile notes sit economically next to the nerviness. The remaster assures there’s edge without edginess. And that’s just in one song’s harmonic interplay and transient flourishes.
Of course, there’s more to an album than the opener. In the original full-length’s case, there’s nine more tracks of prototype indie rock, featuring simultaneously anxious and measured jangle, parallel often hard to parse enunciations, sunny versus sinister undercurrents, and some upright saloon piano. While in the case of this reissue there’s an additional 16-track live performance recorded in Chicago in 1984.
The Aragon Ballroom show stems from a widely bootlegged radio program already well known to serious fan. But the cleaned up recording’s snapshot of a band on the crowd control cusp is an excellent complement for an album that sidestepped the sophomore slump by showcasing R.E.M.’s crisply ringing on-stage style arrangements. It maintains the band’s continuity, even previewing some tracks that would make it on future studio albums, without disrupting Reckoning the way tacking on b-sides might. Besides, no pun intended, those tracks are already available elsewhere. (And if you want even more “bonus” material, the band has just released a live digital EP, Reckoning Songs from the Olympia, featuring four Reckoning numbers rehearsed in 2007.)
Reckoning took to Americana’s tributaries at a time that even Neil Young was patching high concepts and low bit rates through synthesizers and vocoders. Reckoning is an album produced by a band on the road physically and creatively, and is imbued by both the flood of emotions and their aftermath. The album established and unraveled a genre’s code, transporting the Velvet Underground to the Georgia state fair to share a corndog with Pylon, and this well-tempered remaster is essential listening.
It’s also the mark of a quality remastering, which is what the 25-year-old Reckoning has finally received. Following R.E.M.‘s debut Murmur by a year (both when originally released in 1983 and when rereleased as a deluxe edition last year), Reckoning has received a palpable upgrade. It pushes more air than previous releases, including the 2006 I.R.S. best of, but doesn’t sound brickwalled. There’s a sense of reinvigorated presence, and of balance—the background details have become more apparent without being distractingly augmented, and the fragile notes sit economically next to the nerviness. The remaster assures there’s edge without edginess. And that’s just in one song’s harmonic interplay and transient flourishes.
Of course, there’s more to an album than the opener. In the original full-length’s case, there’s nine more tracks of prototype indie rock, featuring simultaneously anxious and measured jangle, parallel often hard to parse enunciations, sunny versus sinister undercurrents, and some upright saloon piano. While in the case of this reissue there’s an additional 16-track live performance recorded in Chicago in 1984.
The Aragon Ballroom show stems from a widely bootlegged radio program already well known to serious fan. But the cleaned up recording’s snapshot of a band on the crowd control cusp is an excellent complement for an album that sidestepped the sophomore slump by showcasing R.E.M.’s crisply ringing on-stage style arrangements. It maintains the band’s continuity, even previewing some tracks that would make it on future studio albums, without disrupting Reckoning the way tacking on b-sides might. Besides, no pun intended, those tracks are already available elsewhere. (And if you want even more “bonus” material, the band has just released a live digital EP, Reckoning Songs from the Olympia, featuring four Reckoning numbers rehearsed in 2007.)
Reckoning took to Americana’s tributaries at a time that even Neil Young was patching high concepts and low bit rates through synthesizers and vocoders. Reckoning is an album produced by a band on the road physically and creatively, and is imbued by both the flood of emotions and their aftermath. The album established and unraveled a genre’s code, transporting the Velvet Underground to the Georgia state fair to share a corndog with Pylon, and this well-tempered remaster is essential listening.
