Various Artists: The Brit Box: UK Indie, Shoegaze and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millenium

Dazzling encapsulation of Britain’s best musical moments from decades past

The most stunning feature of Rhino’s newest premium box is its ability to track a musical trajectory more than 15 years long and three layers deep. Sweeping in everything from the obvious (Oasis) and the expected (the Las, Pulp and Blur) to the underrated (Silver Sun, Mega City Four), the box is a loving monument to a rich stream of English musical culture that’s rightly cherished. Arranged chronologically, the set only gets more subtle and powerful as it travels. Enough so to give us Yanks a bit of envious guilt—while the mid-to-late ‘90s were a time of relative rot on this side of the Atlantic, as the legions of Cobain/Vedder knockoffs choked the spirit of indie rock’s breakthrough earlier in the decade, acts like the too-soon-gone Hurricane #1 or the now-vindicated Placebo happily churned away on the charts of Albion, just beyond the reach of all but the most adventurous American ears. Until now.