For a moment in the gender-bending 1960s, one of America's most popular performers was a 6-foot man with a Dickensian stage name, a giant nose, a tiny ukulele, curly shoulder-length hair and a falsetto voice. Born Herbert Khaury, Tiny Tim (1932-96) sang turn-of-the-century standards in New York's underground nightclubs for years before being discovered by Frank Sinatra's record label in 1967. Within a year he was a regular guest on the hottest TV show in the country (Laugh-In) and his cover of Nick Lucas' 1929 "Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" was a top-20 hit. While appearing at the Center City Wanamaker's he met South Jersey teen Vicki Budinger; just weeks later he married "Miss Vicki" on The Tonight Show before Johnny Carson's largest audience ever. In 1970 Tiny Tim's rendition of "There'll Always Be an England" at the Isle of Wight festival earned him a standing ovation.

Recorded at the height of Tiny's fame, this collection of his first three albums and previously unreleased tracks does a good job of capturing his style. There are plenty of old-fashioned songs ("On the Good Ship Lollipop," Irving Berlin's anti-war "Stay Down Here Where You Belong"), along with The Doors' "People Are Strange" and "Great Balls of Fire." Tiny duets with himself (using a competent baritone) on "I Got You, Babe." Overall, the box set should reestablish Tiny as a worthy contemporary of the equally retro Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

By the time I interviewed Tiny Tim in the summer of 1987, he was touring small towns with the Great American Circus eight months a year. (The circus manager anxiously asked me, "Would it be possible to call you collect?"). But the twice-divorced Tiny sounded like it was still 1969, describing his career to me in great detail, adding that he enjoyed U2 and Bon Jovi. When I asked him if he had any advice for young performers, he quickly replied, "Yes. Be original."

—Andrew Milner

A truce isn't worth a damn if only one party is at the table. On her 18th studio album, Reprieve, Ani DiFranco tries to negotiate the terrain between commitment and smothering ("Unrequited"), entertainment and information ("Decree"), and authority and autonomy ("Shroud"). A blend of moody organs and pretty fingerpicking sets the scene in pale earth tones. Her politics are largely personal this time; "Millennium Theater" alludes to Gitmo and Katrina, but DiFranco spends most of her time feeling her way out of the fog of an unsatisfying union. Best of all is the spoken-word title track. With five months to go before her righteous baby is due, she ruminates on the hypocrisy of warmongers who extol life and liberty but would deny women their reproductive freedom. It's not so hard to imagine DiFranco's ideological opposites endorsing her reverence for motherhood. Now if only they'd abide by her terms.

—M.J. Fine

One gets the feeling that in Adem Ilhan's world, there's always a gentle, cool breeze blowing, and time is perpetually stuck just before dawn in the half-conscious moments before the alarm clock snaps you awake. Or something like that. With Love and Other Planets, the second solo outing from the Fridge bassist, Adem (pronounced AR-dem, apparently) has created a whimsical, sleepy ode to things otherworldly and unknowable. Be it a trial assessment of the depth of modern apathy ("Warning Call") or a faithful promise of better things around the bend ("Something's Going to Come"), these meticulously arranged, almost entirely acoustic songs leave a noticeable trace of ether in their wake. Adem's work is often carelessly lumped in with the freak folk movement, but there isn't a vestige of the underlying creepiness that tag implies here. Instead we're left in the presence of a warm, romantic, searching soul, lulling us into a wholly welcome, 45-minute trance.

—Bret Tobias