Reissues

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.

Doc Pomus began his musical career as a blues singer before turning to songwriting. He went on to write and co-write lots of classic early rock and pop hits, from "A Teenager in Love" to "Viva Las Vegas."

The latest David Bowie collection focuses on a period when he released relatively few full-length studio LPs. Still, the compilers have managed to deliver a wealth of content.

Formed from the ashes of a group called the Ashes (which included future Jefferson Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden), the Peanut Butter Conspiracy dealt in frequently adventurous rock, much of which deserves more attention than it has received.

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.

Faithfull’s 1960s material is the subject of a recently released six-CD, 81-track anthology that shows she was capable of handling everything from traditional and modern folk to Brill Building tunes and rock.

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

Perhaps the Pale Fountains will finally garner some notice following the appearance of a new four-CD box set devoted to Michael Head's critically acclaimed band, which formed in Liverpool in 1980 and split up in 1987.

Let’s hope we’ll soon see similar boxes devoted to the making of Drake’s other two studio albums, both of which are as noteworthy as his debut. The world needs all the music from him that it can get.

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.