Anyone who owned the vinyl copy of Live at Leeds will barely recognise its digitised namesake. While the 1970 record offered a mere six selections, the 1995 CD reissue is fleshed out with a full 14 tracks. Revelling in the augmented Leeds prompts one to wonder why in the name of "Heaven and Hell" they didn't put out a double record in the first place. No matter. This Live at Leeds is actually superior to its revered predecessor. The Who are at their Maximum R&B peak here, bringing an almost proto-metal aggression to supercharged covers of "Young Man Blues", "Summertime Blues", and "Shakin' All Over" (all from the original record) and treating fans to originals familiar ("I Can't Explain", "My Generation", "Magic Bus") and less known ("Heaven and Hell", "Tattoo", "A Quick One"). An improved-upon classic. -Steven Stolder There are only a handful of genuinely seminal albums, but The Who's Live At Leeds is undoubtedly one. Recorded in the comparatively intimate environs of the University Refectory, Leeds, in February 1970, the two-hour-plus show was heavily truncated and clocked in at a mere 38 minutes upon it's release as an album later the same year. Despite this, the album's six tracks showcased the thermonuclear dynamics that established The Who as the best live rock band in the world. [+]

Of all the first wave punk bands, the gruesomely mercurial Stranglers had the highest disregard for law and order and-as this melody-heavy collection serves to remind us-the highest tally of hits. Peaches-The Very Best Of packs 20 of them ("Hanging Around" was never released as a single but it was a hit for Hugh Cornwell's then girlfriend Hazel O'Connor) into one tin but even then there isn't enough room for either "Go Buddy Go" or "Nice in Nice". Famously short of fuse and occasionally sweary of mouth (at least in the early days) Guildford's self-styled "Meninblack" eventually moved away from the snarling, year-zero tenacity of "Something Better to Change" and "No More Heroes" to plough a sophisticated 1980s adult-rock furrow with the beguiling likes of "Always the Sun", "Skin Deep" and the odd-waltz of "Golden Brown". If anything, the non-chronological running order disproves the "they were punk and then all of a sudden and ever-so-conveniently they weren't anymore" notion which the Stranglers' detractors still persist on carping on about to this day. Things with the Stranglers were never that black and white (except on the band's third album, of course) and to listen to the bikini-ogling quasi-reggae laddishness of "Peaches" or to improve one's command of the French language on the extraordinarily sinister "La Folie" is to experience a band who were creatively flexible and adventurously out-of-step with the times, punk or no punk. Strangely, in a poacher-turned-gamekeeper kind of way, the Stranglers ended up doing charity work for the Metropolitan Police and haven't had a hit in yonks. There's a moral in their somewhere. -Kevin Maidment.

Four-year career hiatuses followed by sprawling double-albums could spell trouble for a band of the Chili Peppers' stature: consider they'd originally recorded enough for three discs. The restless, trouble-plagued outfit that helped break alternative rock into the mainstream with a potent fusion of punk 'n' funk in the '80s finds itself two decades on almost completely devoid of the former's energetic abandon, while the latter's effusive rhythms are considerably subdued over the course of this two-hour, 28-track collection. It's not so much that the Peppers have lost their muscular, often uber-macho edge as they have willfully tamed it in service of mature reinvention here. The mellower, often introspective, if no less potent pop ethos that characterized the crossover hit "Under the Bridge" blossoms fully here on tracks like disc one's "Snow," "Wet Sand," and the jazz-cool of "Hey. " The title track, "Desecration Smile," and "She Looks To Me" finds them venturing further into laid back pop ballad territory, while the tricky rhythms of "Dani California," "Charlie," and "So Much I" eventually kick into familiar top gear on the pop-savvy "Tell Me Baby" and hip-hop seasoned "Storm in a Teacup. " It's not that there's a paucity of musical adventure here ("If" and "Animal Bar" finds them wafting into Floydish neo-psychedelia while "Make You Feel Better" seems to channel no less than Joe Jackson) but that it's delivered with a subtlety-and dare we say it?-tasteful musical restraint that's a stark contrast to the band's early, overly overt nature. There's perhaps too much mid-tempo simmering and reflection going on; like most double-albums it could be focused into a much more compelling single disc. But that seems largely beside the Peppers' hooks-over-histrionics point here: an unlikely record to kick back to, and one that both challenges assumptions and eases the band into middle age with an oft languorous, if undeniably savory groove. -Jerry McCulley.