In Brief

It’s ironic that this posthumous collection of odds and ends--outtakes, hotel-room sessions, a jaunty “Letters From a Porcupine” left by the late singer Shannon Hoon on a phone machine--is more personable than the band’s two “real” albums. A casual, Zeppelin-esque folkiness prevails, from an acoustic “No Rain” to a peppy take on John Lennon’s “John Sinclair,” while the opening adaptation of the oldie “The Pusher” gains tragic poignancy from Hoon’s drug death last year.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

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