Browne's default mode has always been delicious melancholy, as this double-CD collection proves once again. A total of 32 songs arranged chronologically from a dozen albums spread over 30 years lays bare the peaks and troughs of his career?the classic troubadour recordings of the '70s, crisis in the '80s when great songs almost got lost in the production, and a return to core values in the '90s. The must-own albums remain the first four from 1972-76, when he virtually defined the West Coast school of singer-songwriting. But for a one-stop career retrospective, this is hard to beat. NIGEL WILLIAMSON

The past few years have seen The Verve's stock plummet in value thanks to Richard Ashcroft's underwhelming solo efforts and a school of bands (including Starsailor and Embrace) who have dumbed down their once proud template, reducing it to pub rock with delusions of grandeur. At their peak, however, in the mid to late '90s, The Verve were wide-eyed dreamers whose mission was to bypass indie rock's timidity and, instead, make music that defined a generation. Critics, laughing nervously, dubbed Ashcroft "Mad" Richard. No matter: there was method in the Wigan quintet's madness, as evidenced by this compilation, which disproves the notion that big is synonymous with bad. The Verve, for all their vastness, had a tenderness of touch that rendered them distinct from rabble-rousers like Oasis and which was apparent on their earliest singles. The amazing "She's A Superstar" (1992) was the kind of psychedelic soul that only Spiritualized have ever come close to, the battle between Ashcroft and guitarist Nick McCabe betraying the tension that, in 1998, would bring the outfit to a premature end. Before then, though, before The Verve were outed as mortals, they would fashion three of the decade's finest singles, each one of which highlighted different facets of the band. The first, "This is Music", from 1995, married the head of Joy Division to Led Zeppelin's heart, its opening line ("I stand accused just like you of being born without a silver spoon") a stunning declaration of intent. Then, in '97, from their swan song Urban Hymns, came the brooding "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and the sad "The Drugs Don't Work", which encapsulated Britain's disenchantment with E culture, despite the fact it was penned for the singer's sick father. Six years on, there are countless copyists, none of whom have come close to echoing their ardour. Now who are you calling "Mad"? PAUL MARDLES

Patty Waters began musical life as a rich, caffeinated jazz vocalist whose explorations of the darkest recesses of the Song saw her abandon the conventional trips and tropes of the genre in favour of a new vocabulary of shrieks, gasps and fearful, wordless utterances. This collection captures more of her velvet sweetness than her avant-starkness, and even includes a very persuasive commercial for Jax beer. However, tracks like "Why Can't I Come To You?" knock today's corporate-sponsored jazz vocalists into a pork pie hat, while "Touched By Rodin In A Paris Museum" is a brilliant extended showcase for the uneasy, Cageian minimalism of her piano playing. DAVID STUBBS

Ah, those were the days: beer-drinking Brits smitten with US country-rock and proto-Americana, co-habiting in cottages and caring not a fig for fame or fortune. Trouble is, most pub-rock bands were produced with a similar lack of ambition, so their recordings from the time sound thin and inconsequential. That said, bassist and de facto frontman Nick Lowe wrote a bunch of beauties with the Brinsleys? the Lennon-ish "I Won't Make It Without You", for one?and there are charming covers here of Jim Ford's "Ju Ju Man", The Crickets' "Don't Ever Change" and even Leroy Sibbles' ska classic, "Hypocrite".

If you have been wondering how Sean Rowley's Guilty Pleasures would sound if you were coming to the songs fresh then here's a dream comp. The overall leaning is towards blue-eyed soul (Joe South, Seals And Crofts' original "Summer Breeze", Lulu's definitive "Oh Me Oh My") and hard rock (Edgar Winter, The Guess Who's monolithic "American Woman") with an unlikely cross-pollination of the two by Rare Earth. Familiar to Homer Simpson but possibly new to you are Redbone's beautiful floater "Come And Get Your Love"?a close relative of King Harvest/Toploader's "Dancing In The Moonlight"?and Looking Glass' seadog soul drama "Brandy". Shame that the artwork is uglier than any contemporary K-Tel-like offering.

If most rock guitar still roots itself in the earthy, wooden fire of the blues, over the last 25 years Vini Reilly has explored a liquid, airy form, notes bent by the other gravities and atmospheres of whichever planet Martin Hannett now calls home. Essentially an update of 1986's Valuable Passages, the extra disc showcases Reilly's experiments with vocal samples ("Otis"), sequenced beats ("Contra Indications") and female singers ("Sing To Me")?all remarkably successful. A much-needed introduction to the fugitive pieces of a neglected career. STEPHEN TROUSSE

The first the world knew of Leonard Cohen was when Judy Collins recorded his "Suzanne"in 1966. She's been plundering his songbook ever since, and Cohen pens a lyrical thank-you in the sleevenotes to this collection. Eight of the songs come from Cohen's first three albums, but we also get "Priests"and "Song Of Bernadette". Collins' renditions are on the demure side. But because the songs were recorded over a period of almost 40 years, there's plenty of variety that makes for a superior collection to the album of Cohen covers recorded by Jennifer Warnes a few years ago.

Only a perverse spoilsport could claim that Neil Young was not a giant among the North American singer-songwriters who emerged in the '60s. For this reviewer, he dwarfs all of them. Young is greater even than his hero Bob Dylan because he is more Heart than Head, more Body than Brain. There's something intuitive and primitively intense about Young's best music that Dylan rarely matches. More Dionysus than Apollo, Young puts music first, words second. And what music it is. In the 35 years that separate "Down By The River", the first song on this collection, from "Harvest Moon", its last, Young created a sonic language that was at once raw and graceful, angry and tremulous, powerful even when it was clunky. The key to Young's greatness may be the permanent tension between his high, feminine tenor and the gritty machismo of his guitar playing. A lumberjack choirboy, Young juggles ethereal sensitivity with visceral energy in a manner that no one else has ever achieved. What better way to start a best-of than with three tracks from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, the '69 LP where Neil threw down his Stones-meet-Dylan gauntlet. Like the late-'60s/ early-'70s Stones, Young's purloined backing band Crazy Horse?disdained by Crosby, Stills and Nash among others?were never flashy, were always real. Next to the first CSN LP, Everybody...'s burning, churning "Cinnamon Girl" is pure punk rock. Even within the pompous confines of CSN&Y, Young was capable of something as livid and frills-free as "Ohio", the 1970 response to Nixon's "tin soldiers" gunning down four protesting students. That "instant protest song" is included here with the more histrionic, Crosby-esque "Southern Man". Inevitably a 16-track Greatest Hits aimed at the UK Yuletide market is going to lean heavily on his harvesting acoustic side. Big surprise that there isn't a single track from the mordant "Doom Trilogy" of the mid-'70s (Time Fades Away, On The Beach, Tonight's The Night). So here are "Helpless", "Heart Of Gold", "Old Man", "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", "After The Gold Rush", "Comes A Time" and "Harvest Moon". Neil Young for grandparents! To redress the mellow bias, Greatest Hits chucks in "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)", "Rockin' In The Free World" and the mighty "Like A Hurricane", that most incandescent of Neil epics. But why "Hurricane" should be here and not, say, "Cortez The Killer" seems a matter of arbitrary judgement. Does all this make for a fitting introduction to the man's bulging oeuvre? Of course not: for any true fan, the 'best' of Neil Young is going to be the least obvious Neil Young. But almost any Neil is better than no Neil at all. In the greater scheme, Greatest Hits can only be a good thing.

Kevin Ayers' post-Harvest output was one long essay in disengagement. Rupert Hines' clinical production on Dr Dream (1974) reduced the warmth, wit and weirdness into permafrost: the sleevenotes quote Ayers' (entirely accurate) misgivings about the album at the time of release. The legendary Rainbow Concert of June 1974 was supposed to be a showcase for the star and guests. The guests (Eno, John Cale, Robert Wyatt) all went on to bigger things, while their host sounds like an onlooker at his own party. Elton John guests on '75's "Sweet Deceiver", presumably in an attempt to boost sales. Like that was gonna work.

From the epic masochism of "...One More Time" to the decadence of "Toxic", The Britney Spears Story has shaped up as a teensploitation fairy tale scripted by Aaron Spelling, Judy Garland and Madonna Ciccone. The soundtrack works best when charged with turbo-choruses and forged in the crucible of Scandinavian ultra-pop? even the contrived spectacle of "Me Against The Music" wasn't enough to salvage the leaden Princefunk chosen to signify maturity. But if squibby Bobby Brown covers are what adulthood has to offer, Britney may be in need of a script doctor if she wants a second act.

Not the definitive 'greatest hits' that will one day reveal the Willards as maybe the most underrated American rock band, but still a fine introduction to Robert Fisher and co. Formed as a loose collective around Fisher and co-writer Paul Austin in Boston in 1996, early tracks like "Bring It Down" show an experimental urge they'd soon abandon. But Fisher's confessional lyrics ?his early life was bruised by alcoholism, drugs and self-loathing?were in place from day one. "Bring The Monster Inside" (in demo form here) was a violent catalyst for his pain. But, in general, they essay a relieved despair, a stately acceptance, describing characters ceasing to struggle as emotional quicksand pulls them under, trapped by loneliness, drink or death. Mostly acoustic instruments cohere into majestic folk-noir narratives, made convincing by Fisher's poetically precise sense of place. "Rainbirds"' midday drinkers skulking deep in a Californian bar's shadows, dreading the sun, is one extreme. "I Miss You Best" is another, snow drifting through a window as a sleepless, abandoned Fisher still feels "the shape of your body like a bruise against my side". These snapshots of Americans stripped to their souls, cut adrift from the gaudy media surface, are allied to strong, swelling tunes and Fisher's rich croon. They are unknown anthems, an alt.country answer to Sinatra's "Only The Lonely". The injustice of the Willards' burial in the underground is then proven by a sequence of powerful rock songs, like "Love Doesn't"'s superior AOR and the glam-cosmic tumult of "Sticky". If there's a criticism of the band, it's their increasing reluctance to let this side loose, a devotion to more meditative moods which can leave them one-paced. But this record's dark lullabies, unanswered prayers, drinking songs and small-hours laments still sound like a lasting legacy.

The recent reissue of Howard's Kid In A Big World, a 1974 work of genius, awoke a new generation to the joys of this ornate songwriter. Pitched by modernists as a missing link between the Eltons, Bowies and Suedes of this world, Kid... wasn't all Howard had in his locker, as this epic piano and vocal disc shows. All his songs tell a libertine's tale?life, art college, sexuality all inform his compositions. "Take Up Your Partners" and "Oh Dad (Look What You've Done)" are positively hunky dory, while "Hall Of Mirrors" and "Lonely Woman" are ultra cabaret, classically designed for any era. Way beyond fashion yet uncommonly chic.

The '60s British club scene had an abundance of full-throated singers, Chris Farlowe among the most accomplished, endorsed by Otis Redding and, supposedly, rejecting first stab at recording "Yesterday". He wisely didn't spurn Andrew Oldham and Mick Jagger's advances and, handed Stones songs on a plate, his craggy voice meshed brilliantly with a contemporary pop veneer, propelling "Out Of Time" up the charts. Nothing else matched it. As Immediate crumbled, "Handbags And Gladrags" gave Farlowe a final minor hit. Rival Rod Stewart coveted the song but had the last laugh? Chris' career stalled, Rod's escalated. MICK HOUGHTON

Of all second-generation US punk bands, perhaps none has been as consistently relevant as Mission Of Burma. During their brief career (1980-83) the Boston band recorded just one studio album, but their taut, skronky songwriting, sabre-toothed intensity and art-rock dynamics? which reveals them to be a combined Gang Of Four, Sex Pistols and Sonic Youth?is still pretty hard to beat. For newcomers, this 16-track compilation is a better place to start than Onoffon?their (entirely creditable) brand new album released earlier this year?since it provides both a valuable history lesson and an exhilarating blast of punk hoodoo. SHARON O'CONNELL

One can't underestimate the importance of journalist Les Tomkins, who lugged his reel-to-reel recorder down to Ronnie Scott's original Soho haunt to both interview visiting US jazz legends and then tape their club performance. These March/April 1964 dates document the UK club debut of tenor sax supremo Getz who, on a bossa nova kick, had recently instigated the last worldwide musical phenomenon before Beatlemania. Here, supported by pianist Stan Tracey, "Manha De Carnaval" (Vol 1) and "Desafinado" (Vol 2) are Getz's solitary concession to his bossa bankroll prior to forging the vibrant straight-ahead sets highlighted by "Night Rider".

John lennon's infamous "Lost Weekend", spanning autumn 1973 into 1975, is one of rock's most intriguing legends. Separated from Mrs L, John raises hell with Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon and Ringo. Their Brandy Alexander-swilling exploits may have made the headlines but, creatively, it fired Lennon up. He recorded two albums, produced another for Nilsson and collaborated with Ringo, Elton John and Mick Jagger besides. A veritable workaholic binge compared to his output during the years either side, it gives the lie to the notion that Lennon had lost anything. Walls And Bridges (released 1974) alone is one of Lennon's most compelling records, fuelled by the bottle but with penetrating songs like "Steel And Glass" and "Bless You". Nilsson's Pussy Cats (also 1974) is equally fascinating. Initially, Lennon gave full rein to Phil Spector on his "Oldies But Mouldies"project, but the winter '73 sessions proved disastrous. Every party animal in LA turned up to bang a tambourine or shake a maraca in the wall of sound. Meticulous as ever, once Spector was eventually ready for him each day, Lennon was a drunken, wasted wreck. Having realised only nine tracks in two months, the great producer absconded with the tapes. Lennon retrieved them six months later, but they were virtually unusable? especially his spent, rasping vocals. Reassembling the Walls And Bridges band, Lennon substituted new recordings and vocals on the Spector tracks?over just four days. In a settlement with Chuck Berry's publishers for plagiarism over "Come Together", Lennon had agreed to record three songs they owned, including a version of the offending "You Can't Catch Me". They were also allowed to put out a pre-release mail-order version of Rock'N"Roll (aka Roots), albeit hastily withdrawn. The official release, bizarrely, discarded two of the best cuts?"Angel Baby" and the dazzling cacophony of "Be My Baby". This latest version also omits the Ronettes cover, but does include "Angel Baby"plus "To Know Her Is To Love Her" and "Since My Baby Left Me" (already on the posthumous Menlove Avenue). A pointless reprise of "Just Because", name-checking the ex-Beatles, hardly makes amends for the missing "Be My Baby", but the remastering beefs up and sharpens the sound, thankfully leaving Lennon's vocals untouched. Rock'N'Roll is a ramshackle triumph over disaster: rough and ready, loose but tight. Lennon remains rock's greatest singer, even though the irrefutable proof of this lies in Beatles' recordings?the raw power of "Twist & Shout" or the sheer relish he brings to Larry Williams' "Bad Boy". Those are the performances of a young man with something to prove, whereas Rock'N'Roll is Lennon belting out old numbers from his youth and simply having a ball. As he says on the sleeve: "You Should Have Been There."If only. MICK HOUGHTON

About as transgressive as a Scooby Doo villain?if not quite as scary? Manson's attempts to present himself as a serious artist have always been laughable, and his political insights have similar cultural resonance to his fifth-form paintings. His singles, though, are frequently tremendous, revealing Manson to be an endearing glam-pop oaf. The daft versions of '80s synth-pop?"Personal Jesus", "Sweet Dreams", "Tainted Love"?are all here. But it's his own fantasias that show his truly subversive side: selling fabulous Gary Glitter stomps to a studiously alienated, pop-hating congregation.

Burning Spear's presence in Vanity Fair two years ago may have taken many of its readers by surprise, but not those who've followed his four-decade career. Winston Rodney, as Bob Marley knew him, has devoted his oeuvre to Rastafarianism, the fervent nature of his songs denying him mass appeal. A shame, because his beatific timbre and leisurely roots rhythms could incite a heathen to invoke the name of Jah. "Door Peeper", especially, wouldn't sound out of place on his zenith, Marcus Garvey. Praise indeed. PAUL MARDLES