This is a reissue of social-commentary songs from five albums Joni Mitchell recorded between 1985 and 1998, when she was making music of luxurious, iconoclastic complexity. No intimate acoustic-guitar confessions here. Instead you get rhythms that expand and dart, melodies that drape tuneful bits from lofty heights, singing that is remote and in-your-face. The tracks, which cohere well as a group, move with poise and slipperiness. The New Wave keyboardist Thomas Dolby appears on "Fiction," Willie Nelson sings "Cool Water" and the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter plays on "Impossible Dreamer," as Mitchell, throughout the set, deplores televangelists, materialism and crassness. These aredemanding, experimental songs, interested in reality yet expressed in almost unreal ways. In time, though, they yield their own sort of stark magic.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."