If the prize for box set of the year went on weight alone, the super-deluxe vinyl version of David Bowie: Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) (★★★★☆, Parlophone, £319.99) would win hands down. The Thin White Duke’s most unlovely period is reassessed within an 18-disc, hernia-inducing package that includes the five original studio albums; the unreleased Toy from 2001 on which Bowie rerecorded his Anthony Newley-influenced pre-fame material; the three-disc BBC Radio Theatre, London, June 27, 2000; and the four-LP Re:Call 5, which collects together B-sides and soundtrack recordings. Add to this a book of unearthed photographs, memorabilia and essays from collaborators including Brian Eno and Nile Rodgers, and you have enough Bowie to get you through to New Year’s Day and beyond. Whether you really need to reacquaint yourself with his foray into drum’n’bass is another matter, but for Bowie nuts this offers total immersion.
Matt Berry is famous for being a comic actor with a very loud voice; his booming cadences have rung out from the mouths of louche ne’er-do-wells on The IT Crowd, Toast of London and What We Do in the Shadows. He’s also a rather quieter songwriter of reflective folk and progressive rock, and his ten years on the Acid Jazz label are celebrated on Gather Up (★★★★☆, Acid Jazz). The four-CD version (£27.99) features some of his loveliest songs (Take My Hand, The Pheasant) alongside his strangest projects (a jazz interpretation of the theme to Blankety Blank), while the five-LP vinyl edition (£139.99) comes with a signed box, some prints and a hardcover book with photoshoot outtakes and words from Berry about his musical journey. For anyone expecting the usual bland singing-actor fare, the warm, pastoral music within this beautifully crafted box — check out the cover artwork for Live at a Festival, featuring Berry’s musical collaborator Cecilia Fage looking like a glamorous witch from a Hammer horror — will be a revelation.
After Peter Jackson’s eight-hour film Get Back, countless features and Paul McCartney making it very clear that it wasn’t him but John Lennon who broke them up, do you still need more Beatles? Then Let It Be (Super Deluxe) (★★★★☆, Apple, £99.99) is here to provide more immersion into the album that should have heralded their return to live music but instead became their epitaph. No amount of historical revision will turn Let It Be into a masterpiece. It is too much of a mishmash, and why Lennon and McCartney rejected George Harrison’s sublime All Things Must Pass in favour of the annoying Maggie Mae is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the 20th century. Still, it is delightful to hear Giles Martin’s new stereo remix alongside Glyn Johns’ original 1969 “live” version, and 27 previously unreleased recordings on the CD edition. A hardback book features a foreword by McCartney. “I was not keen on some of his additions,” he writes of Phil Spector’s production. That’s the understatement of the century. It is all contained within a die-cut slipcase designed in keeping with the original album, making for a tasteful package. Why, though, couldn’t we have had the concert on the Apple rooftop in full? It is a glaring omission on what is otherwise the last word on the Beatles’ most controversial album.
Prince worship is such that anything emerging from his legendary Vault gets snapped up by the superfans, but Welcome 2 America (★★☆☆☆, Legacy, £174.99) is a big letdown. This “lost” album from 2010 finds the late purple overlord griping about everything from the ubiquity of Google to modern pop stars who can’t play their instruments, while displaying plenty of the virtuosity but none of the magic that coloured his finest moments. On top of this the super-deluxe edition stretches the limits of consumer patience by having only three sides of vinyl — the fourth is taken up by an unplayable etching — and various unnecessary pretend VIP passes. The best material comes from a Blu-ray disc of Prince live at the LA Forum in 2011: fantastic, but not worth shelling out close to £200 for.
Joni Mitchell Archives — Volume 1 was my favourite box set of last year. Now comes Archives — Volume 2: The Reprise Years 1968-1971 (★★★★★, Rhino, £70) and it doesn’t disappoint. This time the years leading up to Mitchell’s career-defining masterpiece, Blue, are explored, with some previously unreleased songs along the way. They include Jesus, a sombre piano ballad recorded at the New York apartment that inspired Chelsea Morning; and Midnight Cowboy, a lonesome guitar song written for but never used in John Schlesinger’s 1969 film of the same name, which paints a lurid picture of Jon Voight’s hapless hustler Joe Buck. Alongside the five CDs are an interview with the increasingly reclusive Mitchell by her friend Cameron Crowe and a full recording of her 1969 concert at Carnegie Hall, also available on three vinyl LPs. The nine-minute version of The Circle Game, folding into an early airing of Little Blue, is spellbinding.
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It is a struggle, though, to choose between the Mitchell and the Laura Nyro box set American Dreamer 1967-1978 (★★★★★, Madfish, £160). Here are seven classic albums on vinyl, plus an extra one of rare material, from the New York songwriter who combined jazz complexity with Mitchell’s folksy intimacy and big pop melodies: Save The Country and Wedding Bell Blues became modern standards. And it is beautifully presented, with faithful reproductions of the original artwork alongside a book of photographs and eulogies from famous fans including Elton John and Bette Midler.
Don’t feel that your box set loving relative deserves splashing out on this Christmas? There are cheaper options, such as a 50th-anniversary second coming of Jesus Christ Superstar (★★★★☆, UMC, £45). A hardcover version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s finest moment, it contains two CDs of the original album, a third of extras and a book containing the story of the rock opera as told by the writer Lois Wilson, with lots of photographs of Lloyd Webber and Rice looking like a couple of earnest students who still liked each other. And who can resist the sound of the disciples getting groovy on What’s the Buzz or disco queen Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene, soothing Jesus’s furrowed brow on Everything’s Alright.
The Waterboys: The Magnificent Seven (★★★☆☆, Chrysalis, £35) is a five-CD/one-DVD set focusing on the band from 1989 to 1990 as they toured Fisherman’s Blues and recorded Room to Roam. There is some great, lilting Celtic soul and folk here, although more than 80 previously unreleased tracks from the same two-year period does prove a bit of a slog. Rather more manageable is Can: Live in Brighton 1975 (★★★★☆, Spoon, £34.99), three slabs of vinyl from the experimental German band as they blew the heads off hippies on the south coast with seven instrumental pieces titled, with Teutonic efficiency, Eins to Sieben.
Finally, Once upon a Time in the Midlands (★★★★☆, Cherry Red, £20.99) shows what a fertile place the Black Country was in the smog-clogged late 1960s and early 1970s. Slade, the Moody Blues, Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne’s old band the Idle Race and more than 60 other smouldering nuggets are collected together in a clamshell case. Capturing the period between Midlanders going mod and inventing heavy metal, it evokes an age when factory workers could clock off, get out the kipper tie and play a mind-melting solo down the local club. It is great fun and — suitably, given the straitened circumstances of so many of its stars — cheap as chips.
