Blues

It's about time we had a box set from the Bangles, whose well-hooked, harmony-laden tunes provided some of the brightest moments on Top 40 radio in the 1980s.

Like the rest of the Bootleg anthologies, this one isn’t intended to be anything like a best-of collection. Instead, it aims to dig beneath the surface and hold a magnifying glass to Dylan’s creative process.

There’s not a bad track on the album, which isn’t surprising given how consistently Holzman’s fabled label [Elektra] issued superlative music in its heyday.

Joe Meek offered his share of teen-oriented pop, but he also had a penchant for strange novelty songs, odd sound effects, and numbers that dealt with the occult, outer space, and life on other planets.

If you’re a Dylan fan, this eclectic box is a great place to go treasure hunting.

Adam Duritz is still singing about loneliness, dislocation, alienation, and the pitfalls of stardom, but he remains an intense, attention-grabbing vocalist, and these nine tracks are up to the high standards that the group established early in its career.

The 23-song program mines some of Zappa’s most noteworthy material. He reaches all the way back to 'Freak Out,' the Mothers’ sterling 1966 debut...

The visuals, which are as unusual as the music, contribute to the sense that you’ve entered some sort of LSD dreamworld.

Nighthawk (Parker Hawkins) is clearly brimming over with musical ideas, most of them excellent. And somehow, his seemingly disparate material all fits comfortably on one CD.

It's Murphy's 52nd album, so it’s not surprising that ruminations on aging, mortality, and years gone by permeate this engaging CD.