Retrospective

This is the Animals retrospective to own. For one thing, each of the 22 songs here was carefully culled from the original master tape reels, and the results are obvious; there’s an in-your-room clarity unheard on any previous releases. And every band-defining song is included. You get the The Animals' early- to mid-’60s R&B hits, from the pop-blues of “House of the Rising Sun” and “I’m Crying” to the Brill Building classics “It’s My Life” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (which became a anti-war anthem). The set then journeys from England to Northern California in 1967 after frontman Eric Burdon had reinvented the combo in time for the Summer of Love. You get attendant psychedelic tracks, such as the three-part “Sky Pilot,” the topical “San Franciscan Nights,” the horn-enhanced “Monterey” (dedicated to the music festival: “10,000 electric guitars were groovin’ real loud, yeah!”), and the Doors-y “White House.” The set spectacularly closes with the psych-funk of Eric Burdon’s post-Animals association with the multi-ethnic War: 1970’s trippy “Spill the Wine,” which features an early example of a rapped narrative.