The Smiths may be the oddest Greatest Band Ever ever—as English as shepherd’s pie, drearier than week-old orphanage porridge, led by a sexually ambiguous meat hater who wore a hearing aid as a fashion accessory. And yet Morrissey and his studio-rat strum-wizard songwriting partner Johnny Marr attained a harmonic confluence of nearly Lennon-McCartney proportions. They’ve been compiled to death, but this two-disc set (curated by both Morrissey and Marr) is the most comprehensive survey yet of the Mancunians’ brief, tear-stained blaze through the mid-’80s indie-pop firmament, during which Marr’s tender guitar slickness played perfectly off Moz’s morose-goat moan and radiant pseudo-literate poofery. The flakier (and funnier) Morrissey got, the wider Marr cast his net, but his best look remained the kind of forlorn, confectionary jangle over which a contorted young soul might croon, “Call me morbid, call me pale/I spent six years on your trail.” And make other young souls weep.

DOWNLOAD “Half a Person,” “Ask,” “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”