Dead Letter Office is unlike any other R.E.M. album, and in some ways it’s actually one of the band’s best. It’s an odds-and-sods collection of covers, rarities, and B-sides, and so of course it’s a wildly uneven listen: the band’s drunken and improvised in-the-studio version of Roger Miller’s country classic “King of the Road” starts off inauspiciously, with the band playing in a different key from Michael Stipe’s vocals (and Stipe getting the lyrics wrong in the chorus). On the other hand, their version of the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes Again” is genuinely affecting, and their take on Aerosmith’s “Toys in the Attic” genuinely rocks. And “Burning Down” should have been on Fables of the Reconstruction. Even better, the CD version included the entirety of R.E.M.’s debut EP, Chronic Town, which remains among their best work.

– Rick Anderson