SoundBites: EL VY, The National, Alanis, The Feelers

The National, with Matt Berninger centre.

The National are coming back to New Zealand and frontman Matt Berninger has been busy.

The amiable baritone has just released the album Return to the Moon as part of the duo EL VY (with Brent Knopf of Ramona Falls and Memomena).

Album publicity notes it sounds "exactly like you'd hope a collaboration between these artists would: Berninger's darkly funny, lyrical storytelling and his immediately identifiable sense of melody offset by Knopf's playful, architectural arrangements and inventive production"

Meanwhile, The National recently performed a new track, Roman Candle/Checking Out, and they've said they'll start recording their new album, the follow-up to 2013's Trouble Will Find Me, this month.

Like a fine wine, this is a band that seems to get better with age, so a new release in time for the northern summer will be keenly awaited.

As will their Western Springs gig as part of Auckland City Limits on March 19.

Other acts announced for the festival include Kendrick Lamar, Action Bronson and The Naked and Famous.

It's back to the 90s as two biggies are rereleased.

A special collector's edition of Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill marks the album's 20th anniversary.

The 2-disc deluxe collection includes remastered audio and previously unreleased demos, while the 4-disc collector's edition includes concert and acoustic tracks.

Jagged Little Pill was huge, spawning hits You Oughta Know, Hand in Pocket, Head Over Feet and Ironic.

Meanwhile, the Feelers are reissuing 1998's Supersystem. The album showed a Kiwi band not afraid to perform radio-friendly rock, a sound that earned them both fans and detractors.

The release is available on CD, digital and double album vinyl, and includes four bonus tracks.

Revisit a classic

Why not take another listen to Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness?

The double album, which recently marked its 20th birthday, had a hard act to follow in 1993 classic Siamese Dream, and it approached the task by going bigger - much bigger - bolder and louder.

The album's finest track is arguably the epic 9-minute Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, but the sheer rock audacity of songs such as Zero, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Jellybelly and Bodies, along with the subtle beauty of tracks 1979 and Thirty-Three, left us in no doubt as to the collective brilliance of Billy Corgan and his fellow Pumpkins.