I never quite feel like I have the time I’d like for re-issues, anthologies, and other repackagings of “old” music; nor the patience to give splashy box sets and deluxe editions the attention they require. The list I’m offering here is embarrassingly incomplete, but does offer a few archival releases that have captured my ears and my imagination over 2020.

(For new releases, check out the annotated top 25 list or the comment-free long list.)

01. Palo Alto | Thelonious Monk
Unless you were lucky enough to see him in person, this is about as close to an ideal Monk experience as you’re likely to get— a chance to hear his touring troupe in full dance-band mode, thumping through hits and standards in a sweaty high school gym, all of it captured in gloriously granulated sound by an anonymous janitor. It’s a winning portrait of a well-oiled band that played themselves ragged, even at the most workaday gigs. For its rough-and-ready energy, it might even be the best live Monk album on the market.

02. Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs | Gillian Welch
Close to 20 years ago, Welch and her partner, David Rawlings, spent a weekend dashing off reel-to-reel demos of new originals, plus a few choice covers thrown in for good measure; never intending these songs as anything but contract fulfillment, they promptly locked them in a vault. When the recordings were nearly lost in a Nashville flood, Welch and Rawlings suddenly realized that there’s actually some stuff here they cared enough to want to save, resulting in three separate volumes of “lost songs” that are infinitely appealing in their casualness. Where Welch’s canonical albums all feel carefully-composed and assembled, there is a wonderful looseness to the way these recordings find them dallying with gospel, mountain music, standards, even rock and roll. In fact, the most revelatory songs here tend to be the ones that feel most tossed-off, precisely because they show a side that Welch usually keeps hidden. All three volumes are superb, but if you only have time for one, start with the third one.

03. Sign ‘o’ the Times Deluxe Edition | Prince
The best Prince albums— and this one is certainly in the top three— often gave the impression that he was capable of anything. The astonishing thing about these Sign ‘o’ the Times outtakes is that they only reinforce that idea, revealing that Prince had so many big ideas he had to leave many of them on the cutting room floor. The original album has never sounded more sterling: It remains an album by turns rousing and distressing, using dysfunctional relationships as a mirror for a fraying society, and ending with Prince’s rainbow coalition dancing their troubles to the foot of the Cross.

04. Wildflowers & All the Rest | Tom Petty
A model for how deluxe albums should be constructed, eschewing academia in favor of sheer listenability. There are separate discs devoted to demos, outtakes, and live stuff, and while each section is satisfying in its own right, they ultimately serve as reminders of how disarmingly mean, funny, and heartbroken this album was in the first place.

05. Armed Forces Super Deluxe Edition | Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Initially released in 1979, Armed Forces— an album of tuneful, terse songs about fascism— came at the midpoint of Costello’s initial hot streak with The Attractions, and suggested a songwriter far more sophisticated than his bespectacled-punk reputation let on. A remastered version of the album sounds superb, sparkling melodies and elegant performances laced with strychnine paranoia. The real treasure here is a bounty of rough, raucous live material, which presents Costello’s earliest hits in a disorienting blur of masuline malaise, emotional trauma, and political anxiety. You won’t find many opportunities to hear The Attractions conjure this level of mayhem.

05. The White Stripes Greatest Hits | The White Stripes
A lovingly curated anthology that will remind you of what made this band so special, thoughtfully sequenced to help you hear old songs in a fresh light. When I scan the track list, there are a few songs that I miss. But when the album is playing, I don’t miss anything at all.

06. Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987
A fascinating, highly listenable immersion in a scene that’s too often overlooked by anthologists. Basically, you’ll get 28 songs by bands you’ve probably never heard of, all of them clearly toiling in the shadow of R.E.M. Though none of these songs registered as anything beyond regional hits, almost all of them are delightful in their propulsive melodies, rich vocal harmonies, and jingle-jangle guitar riffs. Listen to the whole thing, then play Reckoning as an encore.

07. Just Coolin’ | Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers
Because Blakey never had the same mystique or tortured vibe as Coltrane and Monk, the arrival of a never-released Jazz Messengers album doesn’t draw the fanfare it probably should. It doesn’t feel like a lost relic or an unearthed page of jazz scripture so much as it’s merely another chance to hear one of the all-time great bands, including the great Lee Morgan on trumpet, lean hard into soulful, bluesy bop. By the way: This was recorded around the same time as Blakey’s masterpiece, Moanin’, and with mostly the same personnel. And every song on it cooks.