That fact alone may make “New Dreams for Old,” a collection of music recorded between 1984 and 1998, seem an odd career choice for the year 2000. It was during those 14 years, after all, that most pop-music fans deleted his name from their memories, only to have it occasionally roused by a spin of “Cars” on the local New Wave radio show.

An optimist would say that this is precisely why Numan should spring this sneak-attack of a recording now. In the last two decades the charts have warmed to electronic sounds. The synthesizer no longer belongs to disco, that dinky, Fruit Roll-Up of pop. Sounds made with the Roland synth machines eventually popped up in rap, techno, electronica and a new style of R&B. With that in mind, Numan’s objective with this release, it follows, would be two-fold: to prove that he’s more important than a single single, and to get paid for doing so.

The early line has him settling for some measure of artistic vindication. “Metal ’98,” a remix of a song from “The Pleasure Principle,” evinces a strange wedding of Siouxsie & the Banshees and the Beastie Boys. A handful of songs — most notably “Tribal” — recall the Sisters of Mercy’s shadowy intensity. And the ghostly waft of synthetic sound billows on “Absolution” gives the song the churning melancholy of a Depeche Mode hit. “This is absolute/This is absolution,” Numan chants on the chorus, one of several moments when he invokes the dark side of religion, a favorite subject picked up on by Depeche Mode and carried through today’s pop by Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson.

With that lock on the dark early ’80s, why didnt Numan enjoy flattering press clippings or some sort of financial success? It may be partly because the recording business has never been especially fond of solo synth whizzes. A band of keyboardists might make for a cult orchestra, but before the era of Moby and Fatboy Slim, one twitchy guy programming a keyboard came off as geeky and pathetic. Consider Howard Jones, Thomas Dolby and Numan vs. Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk. It’s not an entirely solid theory. There’s a chance that the talented yet coldly unreal Numan actually peaked on “The Pleasure Principle,” but it’s only hinted at on this serviceable collection. Why else would he sneak a live version of “Cars” from a 1984 concert onto the new record?

Hard to believe, in retrospect, that Mudhoney has survived long enough to put out the 53-song, two-disc compilation “March to Fuzz.” The collection finds the band — which has not broken up, incidentally, though they are down to two of the four original members — in fine, still unhinged form. This ersatz greatest hits features few new releases and draws mostly from five earlier LPs and two EPs, including the roaring, hot-rod debut, “Superfuzz Bigmuff.”

On “March to Fuzz,” Arm wastes little time in articulating the band’s pointed desperation. “Jesus take me to a higher place,” is his pleading first line on the opening track, “In N Out of Grace.” From there the song breaks into a mad, sonic dash, refusing to let up until guitar, bass and drums lay garroted by a frenzy of feedback. Without many sideways glances, Mudhoney has returned again and again to frayed, garagey rock. “Suck You Dry,” “You Got It” and “A Thousand Forms of Mind” all drive through this territory with admirable abandon.

That’s not to say the band doesn’t have fun. “Into the Drink” is a lean, romping head-bobathon with a chorus that makes it virtually impossible not to shout along. And a marimba on “Baby O Baby” casts Mudhoney in the role of the ship band on a riverboat ride down the Styx.

Perhaps it was a kind of fuck-it-anyway attitude that, in a sense, kept the band young. Weary and worrying, Cobain had the hopes of a million teens to carry on his cardigan shoulders. Mudhoney, conversely, rocked with a loose-limbed insouciance only affordable to the modestly famous. The band always appeared more interested in a party, an inebriated lark, than they were concerned about tomorrow’s hangover. They remain, to borrow a title from “March to Fuzz,” pleased to be “Good Enough.”

Last October, once-ferocious folkies the Violent Femmes returned to their home state to find out just how much fun could be had in Wisconsin. For six straight nights, at assorted venues, the threesome rattled through jumpy, acoustic sets, backed occasionally by five madly tweetering gentlemen called the Horns of Dilemma. The result is the energetic live compilation “Viva Wisconsin.”

Ever since their self-titled debut in 1983, the Violent Femmes have been an unlikely party band. Singer/guitarist Gordon Gano, with that somehow engaging, nasally voice, still whines like he’s not getting any, even though his records have provided great make-out music for teens with bad haircuts for over 15 years. Now, it sounds as if he’s been stuck in adolescence, waiting for his voice to break, while the world flashed forward in a Viagra-blue streak of progress. That division is temporarily resolved during an audience-heavy a cappella sing-along on “Blister in the Sun,” a track that still bats cleanup for the angst anthem all-star team. Everyone knows the lines: “When I’m a-walkin’/I strut my stuff/And I’m so strung out.” The crowd chants along as hungrily as a pack of wild fashion models. Wow: Wisconsin really is a great party state.

Drawing heavily from their first two LPs — 10 of the 20 songs are from the 1983 release or “Hallowed Ground” (1984) — “Viva Wisconsin” delivers unevenly for crowds that sound lustily lubed on Milwaukee’s best. But whether it’s ’83 or ’03, the Femmes seem forever capable of summoning a uniquely insouciant form of clever rock. Guy Hoffman’s snare-tilted drumming springs the CD to life on the opening “Prove My Love.” Peppily rat-tat-tatting along, Hoffman’s playing sounds like a man attempting to brush saloon schmutz off his drum set with a fistful of shoelaces. Brian Ritchie’s bass runs fall in as curiously plump as a collagen-lipped
kiss. For his part, Gano simply seems to be trying to break one guitar string per song.

When the Femmes stray from early hits, they frequently find trouble, which has been the case across the half-dozen or so records since that first album. “Don’t Talk About My Music (Shut Your Mouth)” features grunting, alarmingly metal-minded vocals. There is too much flute noodling, a distracting saxophone space-jam and even a drum solo — yes, a drum solo — on “Black Girls.”

By ending the disk with three aces — the xylophone-laced “Gone Daddy Gone,” the post-puberty rave-up “Add It Up” and an apropos closer, “Kiss Off” — the band leaves its audience bopping to the exit. Their genuine pleasure in playing translates so readily to this live recording that you want to forgive them for never again making as great a record as their first.

“San Lorenzo’s Blues,” the second record by the California four-piece Nuzzle, comes on as unexpectedly soft as a full-count change-up. The plaintive guitar plucks on the CD-opening “San Lorenzo’s Blues Pt. 1″ repeat at intervals on Parts 2, 3 and 4 of the song over the rest of the record, working as a kind of narrator on a walking tour of the album. Along the way, singer Dalton and the gang point out spots where some of the best pop music of the last 20 years was made. Call it rock ‘n’ roll Bloomsday: Here’s where the Meat Puppets bounced toward Bethlehem; and there’s where the Feelies rumbled stoically; that’s the place where R.E.M wrote songs that had fans twitching happily in their corduroy sport coats.

Nuzzle’s first full-length was so dense with growling guitars and Dalton’s one-shoe-on-one-shoe-off, Angry Young Madman yelps, that it takes a few listens to orient oneself to the prettiness of the new album. Several elegiac songs seem to bloom out of the mix then fade away, one song drifting demurely into another. Nate Dalton’s guitar slides gently forward, then doubles back for the drums, which — half-drunk — wave the help away, wobbling spiritedly in the musical bar of the urban wilderness. The Dalton brothers’ call-and-response harmonies roam between the shadows of the music. Lyrically, Andrew Dalton translates the sweet frustrations of different desires. He often writes restrained, elliptical couplets like “Ember of your memory/Your voice on my machine,” from “Allen Says.”

At the end of “Bullet in the Brain,” Wolff’s protagonist, who is just then experiencing the unpleasantness of the story’s title, has a vivid reminiscence. The character recalls playing baseball as a boy. There’s a Southerner, a stranger, in the pickup game of his memory. When teams are arranged, the new kid says he wants to play shortstop. “Short’s the best position they is,” he says. Wolff writes that his character, while dying, “is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music.” Listeners of Nuzzle’s new disc will know just what he means.

In some ways, Spice Girl Mel C — aka Sporty Spice or Melanie Chisholm — is an anomaly. With “Northern Star,” her first solo album, she is stepping out with the blessing of her once and future bandmates.

Melanie, it seems, just had to get this record off her heart. Known by those who claim to know such things as the Spice Girl who can actually sing, and punked-up for the September cover of the English magazine Q, which urges readers to “Meet Talented Spice Mel C,” Chisholm has been fooling us by living two lives at once. We all know she is the cross-training cog in the too-sweet Spice machine. But who knew that, inside, the real Melanie is an alt-digging, L.A rocker siren in a Gucci choker?

To record “Northern Star,” and ostensibly discover herself, Chisholm went where most folks hope to become someone else, Los Angeles. She surrounded herself with local talent: William Orbit and Marius De Vries, who between them have produced or remixed Madonna, Bjvrk, Blur and Massive Attack, among others, and Beastie Boys/Chili Peppers knob fiddler, ragin’ Rick Rubin. Liner notes claim Bryan Adams and two members of Beck’s band posed as backing musicians. Oh, and ex-Pistol Steve Jones turned up, too, wouldn’t you know? Pop music, thy name is kismet.

From the word go — which incidentally is the name of the first cut, only excitedly like this, “Go!” — “Northern Star” isn’t a huge departure for a solo Spice. Despite all of the rocker posturing, the songs are about 50 percent dancey, 50 percent ballady and 100 percent shmaltzy. And the lyrics are about stuff like love, trust and discovering yourself in L.A.

Chisholm’s ability to, at times, sound strangely like her hero Madonna — particularly during the soaring yet somnolent mid-tempo title track — makes you think she’d be a kick to karaoke with. And there are a few other surprises, like TLC’s Lisa Left Eye, who rhymes smoothly on “Never Be the Same Again.” There are also about three tracks hidden in the middle of “Northern Star” where the music is too interesting to cast off, where the jaunty piano bit on the ’80s-tinted “Suddenly Monday” is absolutely Squeezable, and where Melanie Chisholm sings with, well, heart.