This fall, it's box-set time for the very unsummery Seattle band Alice in Chains. Until then, there's this anthology, full of high points from their striking previous albums, plus a stray soundtrack appearance and a pair of live performances. The set opens with two previously unreleased songs: "Get Born Again," recorded last year, is a drone lifted by ominous chorales, hardened by slashing guitars and set off with Layne Staley intoning, "Just repeat a couple lines"; "We Die Young" is a fiery demo. You wouldn't call Alice in Chains a wide-ranging band — they've never met a minor key they didn't love, and melody, in their view, exists to be kept on a leash. But they excel at misery and suffering because they're so disciplined and because they exercise such consistent taste in communicating their blues-grunge-hard-rock despair. "Would?," from 1992's Dirt, is a Seattle song that in 1999 evokes no grunge nostalgia. It's timeless, one of the most stylish singles of the decade, the work of a band which understands that life gets way out of hand but that first-rate rock recordings can't.

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."