Pearl  (Audio CD) 
by Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin's highest charting and arguably most artistically successful album gets the deluxe, expanded treatment on this 2005 reissue. Already re-released once with four extra live tunes, this edition moves those to the second disc, adds nine more (six previously unavailable) from the same summer 1970 tour that predated the original album's January 1971 posthumous release and pads the studio disc with six additional tracks. Those sides--three are inferior, if moderately interesting alternate takes, one is a band jam without Joplin contributing--don't bring much to the table other than to prove that producer Paul A. Rothchild used the correct versions for the final album. But Pearl holds up tremendously well, with Janis focused on some terrific rocking material, yet widening her scope to include a soulful folksy reading of Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee," the album's only major hit.

The real meat of this version consists of the thirteen concert recordings, plucked from the Canadian leg of Joplin's only tour with Full Tilt Boogie. It finds her and the band chugging through ragged but emotionally charged versions of her classics, along with a few tunes from the forthcoming Pearl. Sequenced to mirror her set list, it's a roaring example of Joplin in her prime, comfortable with her band and confident in her astounding abilities to tear into the soul of blues and R&B with vocals that come straight from the heart. Hal Horowitz