Notable CDs

Herman’s Hermits’ run lasted only three years, but what a run it was. Seventeen hits, 11 Top 10s, two No. 1s—British Invasion pop didn’t come any catchier. Or diverse: In juxtaposing Brill Building, Music Hall, and doo-wop, the Hermits made sounding fresh seem easy. Still, this collection’s 66 tracks are too many, inevitably revealing as much about the Hermits’ limitations as about their strengths. At least “My Reservation’s Been Confirmed” is included—a group-penned B-side that’s among the best songs they ever recorded.

Beat the Champ

If you think that Steve Wynn and Scott McCaughey’s Baseball Project songs are amazing, you’ll be even more impressed by John Darnielle’s pro-wrestling songs. It helps, of course, to have felt the appeal of what’s essentially real-time stuntmanship in the service of testosterone-fueled soap opera. But, if you haven’t, give the eulogies to Bruiser Brody (“Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan”) and Bull Ramos (“The Ballad of Bull Ramos”) a chance and you just might. And if those fail, there’s always the hilarious “Foreign Object.”

Caffeine

Would people of taste be championing Robinson if she weren’t a collaborator of Leonard Cohen’s and thus a beneficiary of Cohen’s cachet? Or would they consider her 50-50 blend of Joan Armatrading and Sade derivative? Robinson numbers the “Lord above” among her emotional benefactors in “Lucky,” this album’s sole Cohen co-composition. (Her 2008 album had three.) “Safe,” meanwhile, sounds remarkably like the song that Sister Bertrille sings in the “My Sister, the Star” episode of The Flying Nun.

Before This World

Compare “Angels of Fenway,” this album’s most sharply observed song, with anything by The Baseball Project, and you’ll be reminded of why Taylor and his patented folk-pop seem anachronistic: During a time in which a healthy sense of irony has become a prerequisite for mere survival, he’s still blissfully confusing sentimentality with sentience. What makes his confusion almost enjoyable is that, at 67, he’s apparently feeling more comfortable in his own skin than ever. Unfortunately, given his legendary solipsism, some discomfort might be just what he needs.

Spotlight

What Universal Music means by referring to the priciest 45th-anniversary editions of The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (see “Blurry lines,” in this issue) as “super deluxe” is that they include more bonus material than the merely “deluxe” two-disc editions. In The Velvet Underground’s case, the lagniappe is largely redundant, containing as it does live and studio recordings that are, for the most part, available elsewhere. Granted, having them in one place is convenient, and the latest remasterings are the best sounding yet. But only completists will consider the box essential.

Discs Four (a two-song DVD) and Five (a seven-inch vinyl single) of the Sticky Fingers box aren’t especially valuable either. What is: the 18 1971 live performances on Discs Two and Three, which flesh out the development of the Stones as a performing ensemble circa 1969-1971 more viscerally than the approximately contemporaneous Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be or Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out.