The second album by Jefferson Airplane, Surrealistic Pillow was a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit like a shot heard round the world; where the later efforts from bands like the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and especially, the Charlatans, were initially not too much more than cult successes, Surrealistic Pillow rode the pop charts for most of 1967, soaring into that rarefied Top Five region occupied by the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and so on, to which few American rock acts apart from the Byrds had been able to lay claim since 1964. And decades later the album still comes off as strong as any of those artists' best work. From the Top Ten singles "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" to the sublime "Embryonic Journey," the sensibilities are fierce, the material manages to be both melodic and complex (and it rocks, too), and the performances, sparked by new member Grace Slick on most of the lead vocals, are inspired, helped along by Jerry Garcia (serving as spiritual and musical advisor and sometimes guitarist). Every song is a perfectly cut diamond, too perfect in the eyes of the bandmembers, who felt that following the direction of producer Rick Jarrard and working within three- and four-minute running times, and delivering carefully sung accompaniments and succinct solos, resulted in a record that didn't represent their real sound. Regardless, they did wonderful things with the music within that framework, and the only pity is that RCA didn't record for official release any of the group's shows from the same era, when this material made up the bulk of their repertory. That way the live versions, with the band's creativity unrestricted, could be compared and contrasted with the record. The songwriting was spread around between Marty Balin, Slick, Paul Kantner, and Jorma Kaukonen, and Slick and Balin (who never had a prettier song than "Today," which he'd actually written for Tony Bennett) shared the vocals; the whole album was resplendent in a happy balance of all of these creative elements, before excessive experimentation (musical and chemical) began affecting the band's ability to do a straightforward song. The group never made a better album, and few artists from the era ever did.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

Fans looking for an entrée to Charles Aznavour's daunting catalog will do well to pick up this 20-track career summary. Reduced down from the two-disc 40 Chanson D'or collection, 20 Chansons focuses on Aznavour's French-language material from the '60s and '70s (the singer also cut many records in English and a few in Italian). Shot full of his famously impassioned and slightly raspy vocals, the many highlights include a gypsy-tinged "Les Deux Guitares," the pop ballad "L'Amour C'Est Comme un Jour," and the Sinatra swinger "For Me, Formidable." There's even room for some psych pop ("Le Plaisirs Démodés") and mambo ("Le Comediens"). Most of all, though, the disc includes shining examples of Aznavour's superb chanson balladry. A very welcome addition to the sparse selection of worthwhile Aznavour retrospectives.© Stephen Cook /TiVo

Celebrating a quarter century of Sting: The Solo Artist, the three-CD/one-DVD 2011 box set 25 Years is a handsome retrospective bound in a hardcover book. Some box sets are heavy on rarities, all the better to hook the hardcore, some are designed to be comprehensive but 25 Years follows a different route, choosing to offer a leisurely journey through the past, stopping at all the familiar points on a well-worn path. Not counting the DVD, which contains the final show from Sting’s 2005 Broken Music tour and is heavy on Police material (eight of the ten tracks!), there is nothing unreleased nor is there anything unexpected; some charting singles are missing but they’re the ones that reached the lower rungs of the pop charts or only popped up on rock radio (“Down So Long,” “Epilogue (Nothing ‘Bout Me),” “Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot”), and the various stray songs and B-sides weren’t even in the running for inclusion. What Sting, who selected this sequence himself, has chosen to present are the hits -- from “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” to “Desert Rose” -- supported by album tracks that are concert or fan staples. Not much of a surprise, yet the 45 songs, along with the photo, sketch, and lyric-laden book, do an excellent job of summarizing the spirit of Sting’s years after the Police. If you’re a fan, it’s a classy slice of nostalgia.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Marry Me is the seventh album from British pop star Olly Murs and his first for EMI Records. Produced by David Stewart (BTS, Jonas Brothers), the album sees Murs deliver a bombastic selection of classic pop cuts. The single “Die of a Broken Heart” is included.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Note that title: it’s the Best of 25 Years, Sting’s career-encompassing box set, not a greatest-hits album, so this 12-song collection misses some hit singles. That said, the big ones are here -- “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” “We’ll Be Together,” “Fragile,” “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” -- along with a couple of choice album tracks and Police live cuts that make this a solid sampler of Sting’s solo work.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Nine songs spread over ten inches of shellac, Jacques Brel's debut album descended upon the French scene of the mid-'50s like an alien invasion. One moment, the chain-smoking Belgian singer/songwriter was a minor name struggling for survival around the Paris nightclubs, frequently playing his intense little songs at six different venues a night; the next, the gleeful "Il Peut Pleuvoir" and the contrarily sober "Sur la Place" were rewriting the very nature of the chanson. Where once was simple emoting, Brel implanted emotion. Where once was ribaldry, Brel inserted drollness. And where once local music was for squares and their parents, Brel was feted by teenaged rock & rollers. Jacques Brel et Ses Chansons, the album which ignited the iconoclasm, is ferociously confident. Although only one of the songs will be immediately familiar to a "rock" audience -- Marc Almond covered "Le Diable (Ca Va)" (as "The Devil" on his Jacques album) -- still there is an instantly recognizable compulsion to the performance. Brel's mellifluous, half-smiling, half-snarling voice gallops across the landscape, paced all the way by the richly textured and deeply imaginative accompaniment of Andre Grassi and his orchestra; the snatch of French accordion which punctuates the dark delivery of "Il Nous Faut Regarder" is both hideously apposite and rudely ironic. It is not all doom and gloom, of course -- indeed, Brel's reputation for morbidity and misery is more the premise of his louder English acolytes than of his own work. "C'est Comme Ca" is insanely jovial, a veritable machine gun of leaping lyric and frolicking instrumentation; "Il Peut Pleuvoir" shares a similar outlook, while "Le Fou Du Roi" apparently stepped out of the court of Marie Antoinette, all sweetly chiming harpsichord and a sweetly lilting nursery rhyme rhythm. The ghost of Prokofiev's "Troika" which hangs around the melody only adds to the experience. It is "Sur la Place" which dominates, however. Recorded at one of his first ever sessions with orchestra leader Francois Rauber, with whom Brel would continue to work for the remainder of his career, the song rides an arrangement which wouldn't be out of place punctuating a gentle ghost story, while Brel's talent for conjuring the spirits of nostalgia and sadness from the passing of time is revealed with a perceptiveness almost unbecoming in a mere 25-year-old. Even compared with all that he would go on to create, Jacques Brel et Ses Chansons is no formative, tentative debut offering. Brel sprang into the public consciousness fully formed, with all his gifts and offerings already on public display. All he needed now was for the public to turn and look. Upon release, the album sold a little over 2,000 copies.© Dave Thompson /TiVo