For this colossal 14-DVD visual anthology of The Grateful Dead, perhaps the best place to start is with a figure who came into the Dead’s orbit relatively late. In a new interview featured on the set’s Bonus Disc, you can’t help but get swept up in band archivist David Lemieux’s enthusiasm.

“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” The makers of Seeking a Friend For the End of the World clearly never heard the infamous Coco Chanel advice. Dialogue—like so many pieces of gaudy costume jewelry—drape across every inch of the film, characters piling painful soliloquies onto moments where mere glance has already told us everything we need to know. Remember what Chanel always said? “Simpler is better.”

Singer Neneh Cherry has spent her career all over the map, taking up residence in several countries and lending her skills to a wide array of projects, from fronting punk bands to her hip-hop solo work. She even served as an arranger on Massive Attack’s Blue Lines. Now into her fourth decade as a professional musician, she’s only just releasing a fourth record under her name, and her first in 16 years.

It’s about time they dug up some unreleased Can master tapes. Every other band of their stature gets this treatment three times over, with or without justification—such a collection from the Can-on is a welcome gift.

Rock of Ages is obviously a satire, but the trite character parodies odiously cross the line into groan-inducement more often than not.

Peaking Lights are the married Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes. They’re raising a kid. They once had an odd little shop in Madison, Wisconsin specializing in the excavating trade of weird old records and clothing. Peaking Lights was born out of romance and blithe, endless psychedelic jamming—deep in the comforting blessings that come in the confines of mutual amicability.

Where the Ramones’ punk mission and pop love provided a reliable end result, The Hives’ output is driven by their unswerving affinity for garage rock. Even for their singles, the guitars and drums are always in full whammo mode, and singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist’s giddy bluster shows no sign of relenting.

No one could accuse the dark moods of Metric’s music of hanging like storm clouds over the band’s latest set of songs. Synthetica is eerie and disconcerting, but grounded in a realism that the band refers to as its first attempt at “facing what you know is true.”

It’s difficult to put a new Guided By Voices album into context these days. Robert Pollard has established a particular context of his own, individualistic and idiosyncratic as it may be. All jokes about Pollard’s incredible productivity aside, suffice it to say that Class Clown Spots a UFO is the newly re-formed GBV’s second album of 2012. And it’s not as good as the first.