Like an Old Fashioned Waltz carries English pop romanticism to its extreme, elongating simple folk melodies to accommodate magniloquent orchestration. As a result, Waltz treads the line between schmaltz and grandeur, fortunately tending to the latter thanks to Harry Robinson's string charts, which echo such turn-of-the-century composers as Delius and Elgar. At its heart are four long mood pieces:...

In this, the season of the Great Boxed Sets (Bob Dylan's Biograph, Atlantic Records' fourteen-record history of R&B), Who Knows Where the Time Goes? may seem like an extravagant footnote. A four-record set documenting the career of the late English folk-rock singer Sandy Denny, it contains no "hits" other than her wistful signature ballad "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" But it covers a...