Various Acts - 'Yes New York' (Eastwest)
4/5
By: Toby L
If there is an album more 2003 than 'Yes New York', then we defy you to present it forth as evidence.
Whether the genre, style or dress, NYC has been the spawning-ground over the past 36 months for all things relevant, cutting-edge, back-to-basics, hormonal, raging, wired-up, frantic, raw and retro. So a homage is apt.
Scenes aside, the array and range of talent has been palpable from the East Coast of late.
Scenes in mind therefore, and it's little surprise that any real alt-circle of intellect that has dazzled in recent times has been cultivated in New York. From the trashy, ragged exuberance of Yeah Yeah Yeahs (on this compilation under the guise of alter-egos, Unitard, and performing a 'cover' of their own messy 'Year To Be Hated'), the schizophrenic nuttiness of Ted Leo's collaboration with Pharmacists on 'Ballad Of A Sin Eater', or The Rogers Sisters' 'Zero Point', through to dance-rock pioneers - included are The Rapture's icy floor-filler 'Olio' and Radio 4's 'Save Our City' - the collection is rapt, taut and fuelled with thick, flowing venom.
There are the outside oddballs too - Longwave's minimalist, beauteous 'Next Plateau', or Calla's howling, Radiohead-hinting 'Strangler', let alone runaway successes, Interpol, with their vision-encapsulating, glorious 'NYC'. Elsewhere, majorly influential, crossover production set-up The DFA get three tunes on the release, not to disregard the presence of their remix of underground-luminaries, Le Tigre's 'Deceptacon', whilst The Walkmen score a mid-album highlight in the steely paranoia of 'Rue The Day'.
A rich hotchpotch of glorious textures and rhythms, topped off via the guys who started it all - The Strokes, who open the release with a sterling live-rendition of 'New York City Cops', as recorded last year in Iceland - this is a timely addition to any respectable record-collection that should already be bursting with such names as included herein.
Artists in this article: Various Acts
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