Click to hear The Jayhawks' "Blue" and "Pray For Me"

The Jayhawks were the most pop-wise band in alternative country — riding the rapture for 1992's Hollywood Town Hall (also just reissued) — when they made this masterful 1995 union of wood-smoke aura and Beatlesque glow. "Blue" was exactly how Gram Parsons and Elton John would have sounded in the same song. "Pray for Me" was thoroughly modern Byrds, and "Real Light" was top prairie-garage action. A CD of acoustic demos emphasizes the crossed-blade harmonies of writer-guitarists Mark Olson and Gary Louris — a dream team sundered when Olson quit in 1995, stranding his group in what-might-have-been land.

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“Ambling Alp”

The "Ambling Alp" was the nickname of the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Primo Carnera. Though the song is named after the Italian-born 1930s heavyweight champion, Yeasayer are actually paying tribute to boxing legend Joe Louis with this first-person psychedelic dance-rock tune. “I was always interested in writing a song that had boxing mythology in it,” Yeasayer’s Chris Keating said. “It’s pretty fascinating: There were so many amazing characters, and it was so closely entwined with 20th century history.” Yeaseyer also invokes German champ Max Schmeling and hints at the historical significance placed on the historic bouts between the Nazi-era boxer and the African-American Louis.