5 Very Gifted Box Sets

By Josh Tyrangiel

VARIOUS ARTISTS HEAVEN MUST HAVE SENT YOU: THE HOLLAND/DOZIER/ HOLLAND STORY

The chronically underrated Motown songwriters Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland wrote more No. 1 hits than the Beatles, and there's pure nostalgic pleasure in hearing the Four Tops (Baby I Need Your Loving) and the Supremes (Stop! In the Name of Love) sing them. You can also marvel at the ways in which they managed to make the boundaries of their two commercially dictated themes--(a) I don't deserve you, please come back; and (b) you don't deserve me, I'm not coming back--seem limitless.

JOHNNY CASH JOHNNY CASH: THE LEGEND

The limited-edition version of this box (just 20,000 copies) is tricked out with a Man in Black lithograph and a coffee-table book heavy enough to knock out anyone who asks if it's all really worth $329.98. There's also a considerably cheaper model with just the music, nearly 50 years of Cash divided thematically into four discs. The real find is the Family and Friends disc, which has a selection of Cash's work with the Carter Family plus a spectacularly weird duet with Bob Dylan (Girl from the North Country) and a previously unreleased You Can't Beat Jesus Christ, in which Cash and Billy Joe Shaver discuss Jesus as sports fans might talk about the Shaq and Kobe--era Lakers.

YO LA TENGO PRISONERS OF LOVE: A SMATTERING OF SCINTILLATING SENESCENT SONGS 1985-2003

During their 20 years together, husband and wife Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, plus bassist James McNew, have been praised more than Philip Roth and sold only slightly more records. These three discs are the perfect way to discover a band that swings wildly between exuberant lo-fi noisemaking (The Story of Jazz, Shaker) and some of the best adult love songs of the past decade (Stockholm Syndrome, Tears Are in Your Eyes). They're proof that maturity and fun are not mutually exclusive.

VARIOUS ARTISTS WHATEVER: THE 90S POP AND CULTURE BOX

The curators of this seven-disc set neglect whole chunks of rap and dance music and package the compilation in a cover featuring vacuum-packed coffee beans. They may be going for high camp, but the 130 songs, arranged chronologically--starting with M.C. Hammer's sample-based U Can't Touch This and ending with Moby's sample-based Natural Blues--more or less re-create the bipolar experience of listening to commercial radio in the '90s.

THE BAND THE BAND: A MUSICAL HISTORY

They started out as Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks, morphed into Bob Dylan's swaggering backup group and then struck out on their own, which makes the Band one of the few outfits actually constrained by mere five-disc treatment. Among the 37 previously unreleased tracks, there's a hysterically loose version of Highway 61 Revisited as well as a gospel take on The Weight powered by the Staples. All the Band's hits are included, but the most revealing are the "song sketches," quiet recordings that reveal the origins of the propulsive sound that followed. There are also 108 pages of liner notes, in case you want to read the story of the Band in actual time. --By Josh Tyrangiel