ALBUM REVIEWS

*** Sublime, “Stand by Your Van,” Gasoline Alley/MCA. Sublime was terminally unreliable live, so for experienced observers, even more than for the millions of fans recruited with the band’s posthumous success, “Stand by Your Van” comes as a nice coda to the Long Beach trio’s story. It’s full of raw but alertly engaged performances, culled mainly from a San Francisco gig in 1994, when the band was still scuffling in the underground.

Sublime’s fluency with an assortment of rock and reggae dialects is evident, and its knack for running through material the way Barry Sanders runs through defenses gives the performances an unpredictable jolt of tension and release, momentum and breeziness.

These performances show how mature the late Brad Nowell’s songwriting was on the trio’s 1992 debut, “40 Oz. to Freedom,” and on the segments of the 1994 album “Robbin’ the Hood” that weren’t wasted on studio games.

Modern rock radio is consumed lately with promoting bands that have just one album--and maybe just one good single--in their repertoire. “Stand by Your Van” leads by example, showing a band taking its time, following its own course, and leaving its own stamp, instead of sounding like something stamped out by the marketing machinery to fit a niche.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).