Built to Spill drops its seventh full-length, There Is No Enemy, on October 6. The band is on an extensive North American tour, and it’ll hit New York soon after the album’s release. [Stereogum]

Nineteen-year old Berklee freshman Mike Byrne is The Smashing Pumpkins‘ new drummer. He will play live SP shows and with Billy Corgan’s spin-off band, Spirit in the Sky, as well as on an upcoming album to be announced in September. [Spin]

Fabolous jams behind bars in the new video for the rapper’s current single, “When the Money Goes,” off Loso’s Way, featuring some words of wisdom from Jay-Z. [The L Magazine]

Weezer’s forthcoming seventh album has a title, and it’s Raditude, as posted on the band’s site. [NME]

Thom Yorke will release a solo cover of Mark Mulcahy’s “All for the Best,” as part of a Mulcahy tribute record featuring versions by Dinosaur Jr., The National, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and more. [NME]

Brooklyn trio A Place to Bury Strangers premieres a track from its upcoming album, Exploding Head (out October 6), here. [Stereogum]

“Sink or Swim” is the first track from Bad Lieutenant, a new outfit featuring former New Order bandmates Bernard Sumner and Phil Cunningham. Stream the song here. [Pitchfork]

HEALTH includes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory–style prize tickets in select copies of its forthcoming disc, Get Color. One lucky winner gets to fly to L.A. and accompany the band to Magic Mountain amusement park. For real. [HEALTH]

And from the TONY desk:

Hear a smokin’ new Lightning Bolt track. [The Volume]

Out today: new music from Pissed Jeans, Jay Reatard, Brendan Benson and more. [The Volume]

True confession: I did not care for R.E.M.’s Murmur when it appeared—which is the same as saying that if I’d attempted to realize my nascent rock-crit aspirations a year or so sooner than I did, I’d have been dead at the starting gate. At the time, the rock-crit rulebook looked something like this:

1: Murmur is the greatest American rock record issued in 1983.

2. See No. 1.

Years later, Murmur’s kudzu mumble would finally take hold. (The recent deluxe reissue is an easy recommendation.) Where I came in was Reckoning, R.E.M.’s second full-length album. Issued in 1984, the album showed no sign of the much-cited sophomore-slump phenomenon. What it did show was a band capable of playing lean, wiry jangle rock with muscle and heart, stripped clean of the preciousness that delayed my appreciation of Murmur.

Heard again now, the ten songs that make up Reckoning still hold up. “Harborcoat,” with its near-ska guitar shuffle, is as brash an opener as you could want; “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” and “Pretty Persuasion” remain among the band’s strongest cuts, and “Camera” retains its mystery. Still, it’s “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville,” the most straightforward song—and the only one with lyrics not penned by Michael Stipe; Mike Mills wrote the tune back in 1980—that sticks in my mind most, not least because of a couplet that still resonates with all the power it had for a then-recently dumped collegiate:

At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don’t care that you’re not here with me
’Cause it’s so much easier to handle all my problems if I’m too far out to see

The album sounds crisp, clear and fresh in Universal’s new deluxe repackaging, part of a series that will presumably see the band’s entire I.R.S. catalog spit-shined one last time for the twilight of the CD era. The bonus disc seals the deal, offering a terrific live show taped on July 7, 1984, at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Hearing the young band play, you get no glimmering of a later grandiosity that would inflate into pomp and border on parody. Listen to “Driver 8,” an as-yet-unrecorded track that would turn up on 1985’s challenging Fables of the Reconstruction, and what you hear in Stipe’s insistent twang, Mills’s nimble basslines, Peter Buck’s melancholy jangle and ominous gnarl, and Bill Berry’s affirmative thump is a combination of hunger and confidence that proved R.E.M. had the stuff of greatness.

And into the summer we creep with a new batch of discs:

Amazing Baby Rewild The local boys try to break through with a bit of glam.

Gossip Music for Men Beth Ditto does her best to get that spotlight back—and, apparently, loses the the from the Gossip. (Listen here.)

Regina Spektor Far The local singer finally follows up her 2006 breakthrough, Begin to Hope. (Read a bit of our excitement here.)

Sunset Rubdown Dragonslayer The excellent Wolf Parade side project led by Spencer Krug puts out yet another notable record. (Listen here.)

Tortoise Beacons of Ancestorship The Chicago group tries to outpace its post-rock tag. (Read our review here and listen here.)

Reissue of the week: R.E.M. Reckoning An overlooked early Stipe & Co. disc gets the bells ‘n’ whistles treatment.

As always, check Largehearted Boy for more new-release info.

Tribute shows can be shaky affairs, but the array of talent at tonight’s R.E.M. homage at Carnegie Hall includes something to satisfy pretty much any rocker’s tastes. Everyone from Tommy James and the Shondells (”Shiny Happy People,” perhaps?) to Patti Smith (”Losing My Religion” would be our pick) is on hand, so you can expect to examine all facets of the pioneering Georgian indie-rockers’ sizable oeuvre. And balcony seats are still available for under $50. Our only question is, will the Muppets show up?

For a Wednesday night, there are a surprising amount of viable alternatives; read on for our picks.

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