Pretenders Pirate Radio (Sire/Rhino/Warner Bros.)

There have been many Pretenders, but there is just one Chrissie Hynde: a walking combination of Fifties rockabilly, Sixties girl-group soul and Seventies punk who created some of the greatest rock and pop of the Eighties and beyond. The five-disc box set Pirate Radio documents the fluctuations of the Pretenders -- through good albums and bad, and through a series of lineup changes -- with Hynde serving as the immovable object. Blessed with an emotional range as broad as her musical interests, this Ohio-born, London-based songwriter possesses one of rock's most charmed voices and a no-bullshit charisma that has inspired nearly every female rocker who has followed in her path.

Before the Pretenders became little more than Hynde's backing group, they were three Brits and an expat singer, and most emphatically a band. In the few short seconds of his "Tattooed Love Boys" guitar break, James Honeyman-Scott condenses decades of rock soloing. Elsewhere during the Pretenders' first two albums, he lays down unconventional chords, pedal effects and layered guitar harmonies that U2, the Cure and countless other acts built upon for years. Drugs soon claimed the lives of Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon, and Hynde continued with competent but less crucial bandmates, even firing drummer Martin Chambers after 1984's triumphant Learning to Crawl before bringing him back during 1994's cautious but frequently transcendent Last of the Independents. This instability makes patches of Pirate Radio very spotty. But if Hynde's songwriting sometimes falters, her singing rarely does. From a punky 1978 "Precious" demo to adventurous Loose Screw cuts from 2002, Hynde radiates both erotic vigor and uncommon sensitivity.

Among the box's rare and previously unreleased tracks are several gems, but its DVD of TV appearances and raw concert footage is even more fascinating: It affirms that Hynde kept improving her performance chops into middle age. During the reciprocal domestic abuse of "977," the most lyrically disturbing and yet most musically beatific song of her complex career, Hynde applies her vibrato as thickly as her trademark eyeliner, staring down the camera as if she had nothing to hide. Which, of course, she never has. (BARRY WALTERS)

Donald Fagen Morph the Cat (Reprise)

Smitten with obscure wordplay and ornate sonics, Donald Fagen hasn't focused on hooks since he reunited with Steely Dan partner Walter Becker in the mid-Nineties. So it's a welcome surprise that his first solo album since 1993's Kamakiriad contains his catchiest, most immediate compositions in decades. This renewed emphasis on melody hasn't ruled out Fagen's reliably wry metaphors: The opening title track describes how Manhattan gets happy when visited by a benign feline phantom, and "Mary Shut the Garden Door" likens Bush's reign to a terrorizing invasion of Lincoln Town Cars. But the tunes are as ripe and fleshy as summer fruit: When Fagen converses with Ray Charles' ghost on "What I Do" and flirts with airport security during "Security Joan," spirited results prove Fagen can still pop amid his jazz. (BARRY WALTERS)

Willie Nelson You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker (Lost Highway)

Willie Nelson's cracked-leather voice is a national treasure, and an instrument he applies to everything from Gershwin to reggae. But he's never better than when he's singing lonely-Texas-cowboy songs, and on this album he draws from the best writer of those songs not named William Hugh Nelson: the forgotten but legendary Cindy Walker, whose songs formed the hit parade of Nelson's teenage years. In the Forties, Walker wrote dozens of songs for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including standards like "Cherokee Maiden." Her hometown (Mart, Texas) is just forty miles from Nelson's (Abbott, Texas); when Nelson sings on "Bubbles in My Beer" about "a road paved with heartaches and tears," he sounds forlorn, but he also sounds like a man who has come home. (GAVIN EDWARDS)

Soledad Brothers The Hardest Walk (Alive)

At their best, Soledad Brothers recall the Rolling Stones when Mick and Keith were fresh-faced bluesheads in the mid-Sixties: The prolific Detroit foursome kicks out solid, harmonica-laced blues riffs without sounding derivative or cheesily nostalgic. "Downtown Paranoia Blues" is a distortion-happy tribute to no-good women and the men who love them. "Got that paranoia and it's spinning in my head," drawls singer Johnny Walker, with a little irony: "I could see her laying down in half a million beds." Guitars whine convincingly over the down-at-the-heels piano ballad "Crying Out Loud (Tears of Joy)," and the meandering, ten-minute-plus hidden track, "Dirty Beef in C," is full of psychedelic sitar twangs sure to win over the stoner contingent. Meet the Motor City's newest hitmakers. (LAUREN GITLIN)

Devo 2.0 Devo 2.0 (Walt Disney )

This novelty finds Devo rerecording twelve of their songs with a group of fresh-faced kids handling the vocals. On bright, buzzy cuts like "Whip It" and "Jerkin Back N Forth," the dissonance between the twitchy neuroses of the original songs and these earnest interpretations is mildly funny, but more than anything, 2.0 just feels pointless. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)