Fire And Wine

Covering its most lucrative years, April Wine's Greatest Hits compiles all of this Montreal-based band's material from the '70s, made up of power ballads and hard rock songs. Founder and lead singer Myles Goodwyn pilots the group in both the slow stuff and the guitar-driven tunes, and his obliging voice takes full control of each type. Both "Roller" and "You Could Have Been a Lady" broke Billboard's Top 40 charts, but this collection has many other redeeming factors, especially in the sock hop innocence of "You Won't Dance With Me" or the coarseness of "Weeping Widow."

A characteristically humongous (8-CD) box set from the wonderful obsessive-compulsives at Bear Family, documenting the Killer's '60s tenure at Smash Records. Lewis made consistently good music during this period, but the combination of his personal scandals and the British Invasion made him a pariah to radio programmers until mid-decade, when he returned to his country roots. Highlights of the set include the entirety of a Texas live show, with Lewis and his crack band rendering various early rock standards at dangerously high (i.e., proto punk) speed, some excellent duets with his (then) wife Linda Gail, and gorgeous renditions of standards like Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Merle Haggard's "Lonesome Fugitive." Lewis fans with deep pockets should grab this one immediately…