(FORTUNE Magazine) – Elvis Presley Suspicious Minds: The Memphis 1969 Anthology (RCA)

Tackling Elvis Presley's discography is a bit like individually parsing the Gospels. While no performer ever had as many musical pinnacles crammed into one career, each stage in the Elvis cycle tells just part of the story. Only when these are deciphered, interpreted, and rewoven do we get a glimpse of the sparkling, divine whole.

Shortly before Presley descended into his late-period train wreck as the debauched, white-jump-suited Nero of Vegas, there were the 1969 Memphis sessions--the last truly staggering chapter in the King's saga. In a physical and spiritual return to the R&B Bethlehem where he had channeled both the sacred and the profane at the beginning of his career, the creatively backsliding Elvis traded in his cheesy film work for the rundown authenticity of American Studios and producers Chips Moman and Felton Jarvis. The result borders on the religious.

On this two-disk set containing nine previously unreleased alternative takes, Presley sounds like a hollow star groping for redemption. His voice trembles as if he's unsure of what each new number is about to reveal. And despite some byzantine string orchestrations, Presley's beefy horn section and female backing chorus lend such staples as "In the Ghetto," "Suspicious Minds," and "Kentucky Rain" the transcendental weight of a sinner searching for his soul...and finding it one last time.

--Chris Nashawaty