Various Artists: A Small Circle Of Friends

Every band in the history of recorded music has been the subject of at least one "tribute" album: Even the Germs, an L.A. band that self-destructed after only one album, has the new A Small Circle of Friends, a 21-song collection featuring just about every big name in punk and indie-rock. From visceral metal (Melvins' satisfying "Lexicon Devil") to hummable pop (The Posies' eerily wholesome "Richie Dagger's Crime"), the Germs' limited canon has been reinterpreted in myriad ways, and by acts ranging from The Holez (Hole plus Pat Smear) to Free Kitten to Meat Puppets to L7 to NOFX to That Dog to Matthew Sweet. (Matthew Sweet on a tribute album No way!) In fact, it's precisely that wide range of contributors and interpretations that makes A Small Circle of Friends the rarest of rare breeds: It's a tribute album that actually works. Not only do you get tons of new performances—including playful toss-offs by Mike Watt, J Mascis, Mike D., Thurston Moore, Flea and more—but you also get an album of covers that are neither predictably reverent nor wildly uneven. That's hard to find.