R.E.M.’s second full length LP (following Murmur – Chronic Town was just an EP) and the best album titled Reckoning to come out in the 80s (the second best being the Grateful Dead’s acoustic Reckoning).

To be fair there isn’t really an R.E.M. album I don’t love, but this is one of my favorites – the sequence of 7 Chinese Bros, So. Central Rain, and Pretty Persuasion is my favorite bit, but there’s not a bad song on the LP.

Produced by Don Dixon and Mitch Easter and recorded in North Carolina at Reflection Sound. Artwork by Rev. Howard Finster (who also did the Talking Heads’ Little Creatures cover and in whose Paradise Garden R.E.M. filmed the video for “Radio Free Europe”).

My copy via Beverly Coin & Jewelry in Beverly MA.