Only the second major career-spanning retrospective of the Dead, The Best of the Grateful Dead — released in the spring of 2015, just before a series of farewell shows in the summer — takes advantage of the extra disc 2003’s The Very Best of Grateful Dead lacked. Weighing in at 32 tracks — a full 16 cuts longer than Very Best — The Best of the Grateful Dead also follows a strict chronological sequence, so it takes a little while for the psychedelic haze to lift and the Dead to settle into the rangy, rootsy groove that characterized so much of their existence — right around “St. Stephen” and “China Cat Sunflower,” both from 1969’s Aoxomoxoa. From there, many — but by no means all — of the group’s warhorses are marched out, all in their studio incarnations. This structure perhaps invites some griping about their sometimes ill-advised attempts to ride commercial waves — there’s no disguising the disco diversion of “Shakedown Street” — but by celebrating the warts and providing space for that unexpected late-’80s commercial comeback, The Best of the Grateful Dead is a good capsule history of a band that usually defies such straightforward narratives. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

• Format: Vinyl
• Genre: POP
• RSD Date: n/a
• Released: 06/09/2015