10 Best Reissues of the Year
David Fricke's picks for the year's best reissues include the Beach Boys' finally-completed mosiac-pop symphony, U2's rebirth as future-pop subversives and the Smashing Pumpkins' psychedelic debut.
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Archers of Loaf, ‘Icky Mettle’
The spiked-guitar chaos and pop-wise confrontation are so fluid and bracing, it’s still hard to believe that this 1993 release was the Archers’ debut album. Remember alt-rock this way, and learn from it.
Related
• Jon Dolan's Original Review: Archers of Loaf's 'Icky Mettle' Reissue -
Suede, ‘Suede’
Suede were Brit pop’s most stylishly intoxicating band, draping the anguish of the Smiths in tawdry glam lamé. This 1993 debut, now with early singles and a live DVD, is their meteoric ascendance in full.
Related
• Rolling Stone's Best of 2011 -
The Beau Brummels, ‘Bradley’s Barn’
This 1968 masterpiece – now two CDs with orphaned tracks and non-LP singles – was alternative roots rock way ahead of schedule. The delicate blend of earthy yearning and Sixties adventurism is still a land awaiting discovery.
Related
• Rolling Stone's Best of 2011 -
The Smashing Pumpkins, ‘Gish’
The Pumpkins’ thrilling 1991 debut was a fireball of emotional torment and scouring-guitar psychedelia. A DVD of a 1990 tour is a dynamic reminder that they were once a band, not always a battlefield.
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Various Artists, ‘Phil Spector Presents the Philles Album Collection’
This is the Wall of Sound at its Top 40 height, 1962-64, and the closest the producer ever came to happy endings: opulent teenage melodramas built around the vocal elation of the Ronettes, Darlene Love and La La Brooks. A disc of instrumental B sides is pure chops – Spector's session cats, the so-called Wrecking Crew, at play.
Related
• Rolling Stone's Best of 2011 -
Kate and Anna McGarrigle, ‘Tell My Sister’
The Canadian sisters' first albums – 1975's Kate and Anna McGarrigle and 1977's Dancer With Bruised Knees – are gently probing treasures of the singer-songwriter boom. A third CD here of earlier demos gives the girlish shiver and frontier-mother spine of their voices extra room to glow.
Related
• Will Hermes' Original Review: Kate and Anna McGarrigle's 'Tell My Sister' -
Various Artists, ‘The Bristol Sessions 1927-1928: The Big Bang of Country Music’
Country music, as an industry and nationally shared poetic voice, started in Bristol, Tennessee – the raw, exciting parade of balladeers, storytellers and hillbilly party bands who came from the hills and off the farms to play in Ralph Peer's makeshift studio. The 1927 recordings include the first ever by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family – history enough for one week.
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• Rolling Stone's Best of 2011 -
The Rolling Stones, ‘Some Girls: Deluxe Edition’
The 1978 original's gnarly decadence is doubled with outtakes, some with recent buffing. But that leaves no undue shine on the true-crime gallop "Claudine," or Keith Richards' pining in the bittersweet country downer "We Had It All."
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• Rob Sheffield's Original Review: The Rolling Stones' 'Some Girls: Deluxe Edition'
• Rolling Stones Unearth Material for 'Some Girls' Reissue
• Photos: Rare and Intimate Shots of the Rolling Stones -
U2, ‘Achtung Baby’ (20th Anniversary Edition)
U2’s 1991 transformation from earnest seekers in pilgrim black to gaudy future-pop subversives is one of rock’s great acts of rebirth. The blanket coverage in remixes, B sides and embryonic demos is uniquely instructive – a lust for change recounted step by step, even the wrong ones.
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• Andy Greene's Original Review: U2's 'Achtung Baby (20th Anniversary Edition)'
• U2 Revisit 'Achtung Baby' and Question Their Future
• U2 Go Back to the Nineties with Massive 'Achtung Baby' Reissue -
The Beach Boys, ‘The Smile Sessions Box Set’
The greatest rock album never finished receives lavish closure: five CDs of deep studio detail from 1966 and 1967 – with sunbursts of vocal and instrumental eccentricity – as Brian Wilson builds his mosaic-pop symphony about America’s pioneer history. One disc is the best of it all – Smile as it might have been. The outtakes take you into Wilson’s imagination, before it shut down in disappointment.
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• David Fricke's Original Review: The Beach Boys' 'The Smile Sessions Box Set'
• The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time: The Beach Boys