The set employs a “Get Back”-style approach to several of the songs, where listeners can hear the evolution of “Yellow Submarine” from a depressing lament to the familiar jaunty children’s anthem, that “And Your Bird Can Sing” once had a flagrant Byrds reference, and “Tomorrow Never Knows” was originally much slower — and even trippier. ... What’s really special here are the aforementioned book and especially the outtakes, many of which have eluded bootleggers over the half-century-plus since illicit Beatles releases began hitting the market.

Lizzy are in explosive form on each of the gigs presented here, bringing a vibrancy and fluidity that was sometimes missing from the studio versions of these songs. The band’s all-time best lineup is in top form. ... Yes, seven concerts by anyone is a lot, and not surprisingly for shows recorded across just 18 months, there’s a lot of repetition. But this is the best kind of boxed set: one you can keep coming back to. Nearly 50 years later, Lizzy has never sounded better.

The new mix is just part of the reason to pick up the four-CD “Let It Bleed” edition, if probably the most crucial one. .... And the disc of alternate versions and outtakes, most previously unreleased, makes for a great listen by itself, as well as satisfying some historical curiosity about things like how some early Alex Chilton-produced demos compare with the finished album.

In short, it’s a die-hard fan’s fantasy come to life — and like the deluxe edition of “1999” released last year, goes a long way toward satiating appetites only made stronger by decades of bootlegs. (And, remarkably, the compilers left out a lot.)

The remixed album itself holds hundreds of small and large musical pleasures. ... So for anyone on the fence, maybe the best advice is to buy this edition for the deliriously detailed historical book, if nothing else — then decide whether to warm up to the new spatial separation on John, Paul and George’s turn-taking guitar solos on “The End,” among other modest tweaks.

“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” sounds as fresh as something that crossed Apple’s fertile mind 10 minutes ago. It may be way early to say it’s the most satisfying album of the year, but if there are any more to come along this good, 2020 is not going to feel like such a waste of time after all.

There’s one element that will probably sway any die-hard fan still on the fence: The Band’s 11-song, previously unreleased Woodstock set in full. ... You can feel The Band testing itself, stretching its legs, figuring out what it is and what it’s going to become. And 50 years later, you’re there with them.

It’s hard to imagine most people needing to hear some of the titles here more than once. But this sprawling deluxe edition of “The Who Sell Out” is like a living museum of a group beginning to realize its greatness, and the thrill of their discovery — in 1967, no less — remains vivid 53 years later.

Some artists play by the rules, others revel in breaking them — and with “Fountain Baby,” Amaraae leaves no question to which category is hers, all while demonstrating how wide the umbrella of African pop can be.

“Déjà Vu: 50th Anniversary Edition” is again like those aforementioned Beatles boxed sets in that we can see how close some of those songs came to not being classics, quite, without the final bit of vocal arrangement or an extra melodic element that sent them over the top.

Now, as on that pivotal work [2001’s “Love and Theft”], it makes for songs that can be as confounding as they are thrilling. What an accomplishment it is to be 79 and achieving new levels of elusiveness — riveting elusiveness — as his mystery train rolls closer to the station.

With fascinating oral-history annotation for all 70 tracks in the “super-deluxe” edition, the augmented “Wildflowers” is the best and most justified boxed set of this kind since the Beatles’ White Album compendium. It’s one of the ones you’d load under your arm in a fire. Petty was on fire during this period, as the presence of 32 distinct compositions in the big box attests.

Listening to this gargantuan boxed set, it’s hard not to get the sense that if Lambert had been healthy, he might have been able to focus Townshend’s brilliant, beautiful, exciting songs into a concept as coherent as “Tommy.” “Who’s Next/ Life House” shows how tantalizingly close they came.

For the fanatic, there is nothing quite like this sound-bath and its accompanying eye candy. If the full monty is out of reach price-wise for the Clark aficionado, the two-CD hardbound edition, which includes nine of the alternates, is a magnificent alternative, containing generous excerpts (including Rogan’s complete essay, song lyrics and band bios) from the box’s book. Even if you choose the least expensive option of the basic LP or single CD, you are in for a revelation if you have never heard “No Other.” As its title suggests, it remains a one-of-a-kind listening experience.

An album that not only marks Rosalia’s true arrival, it moves her toward the front line of today’s musical innovators.

“Desire” is clearly her vision all the way, a forceful and determined effort that vaults her to the front of adventurous pop music.

The fact that Sault seduces listeners, drawing them in with beautiful sounds, and then hits them with uncompromisingly direct lyrics and messages that startle them into thinking about things they might not normally think about, especially when grooving to music, is perhaps the greatest triumph. Sault’s music is definitively 2020, by, for and about these times.

Needless to say, this gorgeous cacophony sounds more amazing than ever in this revamped sonic edition. ... There are 47 demos and outtakes, most of them previously unreleased — none is a Holy Grail, but several are fascinating. Most interesting are the demos. ... Some may argue, not without reason, that McCartney’s “Band on the Run” or Lennon’s “Plastic Ono Band” or “Imagine” is actually the best Beatles solo album, but this lovingly rendered 50th anniversary edition makes the case for “All Things Must Pass” in vivid detail.

It’s a remarkable time that is documented in superfan-satisfying detail in the 4-CD collection “A Divine Symmetry,” the latest in the long and beautifully compiled series of reissues from the Bowie estate (the vinyl will be available in February).

Titanic Rising is a new peak for a rapidly maturing and utterly distinctive artist.

“Act II” feels a lot like a 27-course meal, difficult to describe in whole, but endlessly easy to digest, serving by serving. .... As a whole, “Cowboy Carter” is a masterpiece of sophisticated vocal arranging, laid out on top of mostly fairly stark band tracks.

As one might expect from the title, “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately” is elaborate, dramatic and demanding, and is not the kind of art that one comes to lightly — although, in yet another of the album’s counterintuitions, it works just as well as background listening as it does in intense focus. Expect this challenging and ever-changing artist’s most definitive statement to date to top many album-of-the-year lists.

A collection of [new-to-us] songs that doesn’t have a real dud in the bunch.

“Cheap Trick Live at the Whisky 1977” actually is one of those astonishing releases.

“Renaissance” (volume one of three) is sticky, sweaty, hedonistic art — flanked by a pastiche of genres that never lingers on long enough for the listener to get too comfortable. It’s what makes the collection its own kind of masterpiece: beauty in the chaos.

A refreshingly concise distillation of the best outtakes from the weeks of sessions, which were essentially rehearsals. ... Even half a century later, the group’s sterling quality control remains, and if this lavish, multi-part treatment of the Beatles’ swan song is truly the last dance, they’ve made the most of it. ... [Paraphrasing] Paul McCartney’s response to criticism of the “White Album” in the 1990s “Beatles Anthology” series: “It was great, it sold, it’s the bloody Beatles — shut up!”

As clever as the album consistently is, it still maintains the aura she’s established of transmitting real-talk teen vérité right into the grooves. Wherever her 20s take her from here, may it turn out to be just as affectionate, cheeky and brash.

Although there are hummable potential singles that stick out, such as “Shirt,” and singularly contagious tracks such as “Conceited,” “SOS” is a record meant to be heard in its entirety. It would have been entrancing, surely, at double the length.