Music Reviews

Box sets are investments. Not just in terms of their usually lofty SRPs, but also in regard to the amount of time and attention needed/required to listen to, enjoy, and fully absorb the multiple hours’ worth of music they hold.

As an inveterate and unrepentant audiophile-collector-obtainer, I strive to acquire as many music-centric box sets as my wallet allows, whether they be comprised of LPs, CDs, DVDs, BDs, and/or a combination thereof—and, more often than not, I also strive to get them in hand upon their initial release dates since some are limited editions that tend to sell out fairly quickly at the front end of their runs, with no guarantees of any repressings to follow.

The other alluded-to investment is the sheer amount of time involved in listening to each box set in full, reading all the liners and credits, and just reveling in the pure, joyful experience of it all.

Typically, a wealth (pun intended) of box sets gets released toward the end of any given calendar year, many of them geared toward holiday purchasing. I always try to keep up with the box deluge, but I often find I just can’t listen to all of what I’m able to procure in such a compressed time period.

Thankfully, as our new year continues to unfold and the volume of new releases has scaled back to a more “normal” flow, I’ve been able to spend quality listening time with a number of those box sets that piled up around the holidays—and the time is now to let you know about their respective merits. If you still have some leftover holiday-gift funds in your coffers and/or want to invest in some truly worthwhile listening deep dives, here are five cool music box sets that were released in recent months that you may know the basics about, if even anything at all—but each of them is worthy of your attention. Happy listenings-to-come, everyone!

RUSH
THE ALBUMS 1989-1996
180g 6LP (Anthem/Atlantic)
This 180g 6LP set (SRP: $149.98) focuses on a core block of four of Rush’s post-Mercury studio releases on Atlantic between 1989 and 1996—November 1989’s Presto, September 1991’s Roll the Bones, October 1993’s Counterparts, and September 1996’s Test for Echo—and, for completists like me, it was an instant must-have, especially on 180g vinyl. Plus, longtime Rush cover artist/designer Hugh Syme contributed reimagined artwork prints for each album cover, plus a cool new amalgamation of those images on the slipcase (most of which can be seen in the array above).

Though all four of these albums were initially released during the height of the digital-centric CD age, each of them has their own merits on vinyl. That said, the first two 1LP offerings—Presto and Roll the Bones—sounded quieter and less dynamic to me than the pair of 2LP sets that follow them in the box. Perhaps that was due to the more atmospheric and less volume-centric production style deployed by Rupert Hine, who co-produced them both along with the band. Presto is among my least favorite Rush albums overall, to be honest, but once I turned my volume knob up beyond my usual threshold, I did get to enjoy the thrust of “Show Don’t Tell,” the perennially touching sensitivity of “The Pass” (a track that always went up a notch in intention and intensity whenever it was performed live), the magic-wand breeziness of the title track, and the muscular crackle of “Superconductor.” Roll the Bones has better songs overall than its predecessor, so the pulsating “Dreamline,” the low-end-centric mechanized rap on the title track, the secret-cool vulnerability of “Ghost of a Chance,” and the tilt ’n’ lilt of “Neurotica” all held a bit more sway between my ears.

Perhaps changing their co-producer to Peter Collins helped open up the much more dynamic (and, frankly, much louder) soundstage put forth on both Counterparts and Test for Echo—and certainly spreading them out over 2LPs (three sides of music each, with an etched image on their fourth sides) instead of being crammed onto a single disc let the breadth of their respective arrangements breathe more as well. On Counterparts, the foreboding “Animate,” the backbone lesson of “Stick It Out,” and the spy caper of “Double Agent” (replete with Geddy Lee’s noir-narrative vocals!) fit that much better sonic bill—much as the cautionary-tale title track, relentless widening gyre of “Driven,” and acoustically plaintive and piano-line-supported “Resist” made for the better aural grade on Test for Echo.

Here’s the bad news/good news part. Bad news first—the limited edition 1989-1996 box set sold out fairly quickly, so you’ll have to go to Discogs (and/or elsewhere) to see what the market, and your wallet, will bear. Good news next—each LP in the box is now being made available individually starting today, January 31, 2025, so you can seek out your favorite and/or favorites for a reasonably fair price (starting circa $32 for the 1LP sets, and $42 for the 2LP editions), but keep in mind these too are limited editions. So get out there and rock / And roll the bones. . .

ELVIS COSTELLO
KING OF AMERICA & OTHER REALMS
6CD Super Deluxe Edition (UMe)
Elvis Costello is so prolific and so fulfilling as an artist that you just can’t take in the full measure of every release of his at the jump. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of a true artist, for Costello’s depth of catalog—which began in earnest in 1977—is rife with scores of gems to be (re)absorbed and (re)discovered. Such is the case with his February 1986 release King of America on Columbia that was then attributed to The Costello Show (Featuring Elvis Costello), but has since been updated by UMe under the sobriquet King of America & Other Realms and is now putting forth 6CDs’ worth of innate aural exploration. Before cueing up any of the music, however, I wholeheartedly suggest you read all 35 pages of the Costello-penned liner notes first, for they are as informational, jovial, witty, and biting as any box set essays you’ll ever come across.

Other Realms (SRP: $139.98) proffers 97 tracks that essentially fete and expand upon Costello’s initial collaboration with producer T Bone Burnett, with the modern production helmed by Costello and Steve Berkowitz. (Brief addendum: The two titans were at it again together in late 2024 with a new 2LP set on New West dubbed The Coward Brothers, a joint Costello/Burnett treasure trove also well worth your time.) Housed in a hardback, 11.25 x 10.25 x 0.5in (w/h/d) format, Other Realms is admittedly a hard one to shelve easily—plus, in just over a few months’ time, I’ve found the rigid front and back covers that each house 3CDs apiece have begun to bow outward. This is a minor nit, I admit, but at least that bowing hasn’t affected any of the CDs’ playback at all. (You can get yours here at Costello’s official store.)

My kingdom for the time/space continuum to discuss all of its mighty tracks, but some Other Realms highlights/faves of mine include the twangy, cheeky Costello/Burnett duet “The People’s Limousine” (Disc 2); the dark cloud hovering over the broken optimism of “Brilliant Mistake,” done live at The Royal Albert Hall in 1987 (Disc 3); the Cajun-infused, horn-driven snarl of “Bedlam,” cut in Montreal in 1986 with Allen Toussaint (Disc 4); the raw determination of the stripped-down “The Scarlet Tide,” performed live at the Grand Ole Opry in 2006 with Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings (Disc 5); and Elvis’ lead-vocal vowel-note extensions on “That Day Is Done,” as done in 1997 with The Fairfield Four on background harmonies (Disc 6).

King of America & Other Realms handily shows Elvis has not yet left the building of excellence—and he probably never will. Long live the King.

ELECTRIC LADY STUDIOS: A JIMI HENDRIX VISION
5LP/1BD & 3CD/1BD (Experience Hendrix/Legacy)
”It’s a unique sounding room,” longtime Jimi Hendrix producer/engineer Eddie Kramer says near the outset of the documentary on the Blu-ray that’s in both versions of the Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision box set. Just before making that assessment—which I can personally attest to its accuracy, having been someone who sat next to the producer in Electric Lady in the early 1990s while he mixed Sting’s lead vocals on the orchestral version of “The Wind Cries Mary” for the 1995 RCA Victor In From the Storm compilation—Kramer prefaced it by saying, “When you hit a guitar, it starts at this point and just amplifies out, and it envelops [you] with this fat, beautiful, gorgeous sound.”

Hard to argue with any of that, really—and it’s also hard to go wrong with either version of Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, one of the most perfectly subtitled collections there is. The full-size 5LP/1BD box set (SRP: $119.99) spreads its tracks across ten sides of vinyl (pressed at QRP), while the 45rpm-size 3CD/1BD comp (SRP: $59.99) does its thing digitally. Hardcore Jimi collectors will want them both, of course. (As of this posting, both are currently in stock here at Music Direct.)

Either way, you get 39 alternate takes, alternate versions, and alternate mixes of Jimi tracks both well known (“Straight Ahead,” “Dolly Dagger,” “Angel”) and lesser known (“Heaven Has No Sorrow,” “Come Down Hard on Me,” “Messing Around”). All of them—38 out of said 39 having been previously unreleased—were cut at Electric Lady Studios in NYC between June and August 1970 (just prior to Hendrix’s unfortunate passing that September 18), and they add yet another layer to the ever-prolific artist who sadly left us long, long before his time.

Naturally, besides the content and insight found within the doc, Kramer and Chandler Harrod’s 5.1 mix of 20 tracks on the BD (17 of them from Jimi’s posthumous 1997 First Rays of the New Rising Sun album, plus three bonus tracks)—whether it’s the ping-ponging riffola shuffle of “Freedom,” the loose in-studio harmonica-laden honk of “My Friend” (“pass me that bottle,” indeed!), or the cosmic swirl of “Room Full of Mirrors”—expands upon the 3D sound Jimi was always trying to capture in stereo. The only thing I’d implore here? Guys, I humbly beg of you—do it all in Dolby Atmos next time, please!!

“He knew he had something special.” Not only does that statement encapsulate the self-awareness and inherent talent of one James Marshall Hendrix, but it also encompasses the spirit of the studio that was to be his forever home away from home.

THE TRAGICALLY HIP
UP TO HERE
180g 4LP/1BD & 3CD/1BD (Universal Music Canada)
The first full album proper by Canada’s favorite sons The Tragically Hip, their September 1989 Up to Here debut LP on MCA, expertly captured the sound of a hungry young band in the midst of finding their own chops while also stoking the fires fanned by having recording the basic tracks at Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, with Don Smith (The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers) behind the board.

Somewhat akin to the above-reviewed Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision collection, listeners can either go with the full-size 180g 4LP/1BD box set (SRP: $175) or the 3CD/1BD clamshell box (SRP: $90)—or both. (Completists already know what they must do here, though you may have to go elsewhere to obtain the CD/BD box.)

Up to Here is replete with holy grail extras. Well-bootlegged studio tracks like the acoustic-tinged vocal tradeoff “Get Back Again” finally come to officially released remastered life, while a batch of demos like the relentless gnarl of “Hailstone Hand of God” capture The Hip’s studio-prep magic. A full of-era concert—Live at the Misty Moon, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on April 26, 1990—gets a righteous airing in both audio and video formats (i.e., on LP, CD, and BD), so you can literally see and hear the band making their not-so-little-bones on tracks like “Crack My Spine Like a Whip,” “Highway Girl,” and “Boots or Hearts,” plus the yet-to-be-released “Three Pistols,” “Fight,” and “On the Verge” (the latter three of which would appear on Side 2 of their next album, February 1991’s Road Apples).

The Hip have consistently embraced Atmos mixes on their box sets in recent years— Up to Here is their fourth such offering—and Mark Vreeken, who knows the band’s sound intimately after having mixed them both live and in studio for decades, lends a learned ear for how to open up tracks he (and many of we) know inside out. Dig the Cylon-esque throb of the bed track on “Blow at High Dough” and the enveloping swampy snarl of “New Orleans Is Sinking,” for example—not to mention how you can better discern all the nuanced kernels of the late, great Gord Downie’s then-still-developing lead vocal style.

Up to Here is but an early, opening gambit on The Hip’s journey together, and here’s hoping there are more boxes a-coming from their rich catalog. Me, I’m all for The Hip and their team tackling an expanded multidisc and duly Atmos-ized edition of September 1994’s Day for Night next.

ERIC CLAPTON’S CROSSROADS GUITAR FESTIVAL 2023
6LP & 4CD/2BD (Crossroads Concerts/Reprise/Rhino)
Eric Clapton’s semi-regular Crossroads Guitar Festivals have always been put together for a good cause, as the profits from the concerts themselves and the royalties from the ensuing recordings all serve to benefit the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a treatment and education facility for chemically dependent persons that was founded by Clapton in 1998.

While I have yet to attend one of these important live events myself, I do have the LP and CD box sets covering concert year 2019, as well as the companion BD release, in addition to the 2014 multi-festival compilation LP/CD box sets and the DVD and CD for the 2013 festival. The latest iteration Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023, is another jewel in the event’s charitable crown. It’s available in 6LP (SRP: $179.98) and 4CD/2BD (SRP: $116.98) incarnations—and while I do of course have both, I much prefer cueing up the 6LP edition because I feel the true soul of the festival’s vibrantly beating rock & roll heart is better experienced on vinyl. (Both are currently available here at Music Direct.)

The modern intersection of blues, rock, and soul are strong all the way throughout this new Crossroads collection that was recorded at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on September 23 and 24, 2023. Here are but a few of my favorite tracks: Gary Clark Jr.’s vocal-and-guitar-only reading of “Habits” (LP1, Side A, Track 4); the furious, breakneck 8-minute take on “Smokestack Lightning” by Eric Gales, Samantha Fish, and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram (LP2, Side C, Track 4); Jimmie Vaughan’s good-Texan twist on “Sweet Home Chicago” (LP3, Side E, Track 4); Marcus King’s precipice-balancing ride on “It’s Too Late” (LP4, Side H, Track 2); H.E.R.’s soulful, harmonic reading of “Hold On” with John Mayer and Kenny Wilson (LP5, Side I, Track 3); and Clapton’s burled, measured turn on the titular classic “Crossroads” with Stevie Wonder sitting in, along with longtime Clapton Band singers Sharon White and Katie Kissoon adding sweet backing vocals on the choruses (LP6, Side L, Track 3).

And that’s my time, so to speak—so now, it’s your time to dig in, absorb, and enjoy many multiple hours of sweet, sweet box set music listening.