These are the only two albums by REM that I truely liked. Saw REM on the Reckoning tour and they were pretty awful so I kind of gave up on them after that. Bought the album once that had Stand on it. Terrible.
Anyway back to the question. Both great but I have to go with Reckoning. So. Central Rain and Don't go Back to Rockville are better than anything on Murmur and the rest is pretty good. So basically going hits over total quality.
I can't see Hutch's first album photo. You might want to list the album title / band under photos from now on in case they get blocked.