Yes New York

To, em, stroke a phrase from a certain besneakered quintet – is this it? Either this compilation isn’t as definitive a snapshot of the New York rock renaissance as it claims to be, or else literally every last traffic cop, hotdog vendor and Italian grandmother in New York is making art-garage-dance-punk at the moment.

If you can get over the slightly worrying sensation of a city of nine million crowded around one increasingly frayed hymnsheet, Yes New York has much to recommend it. There’s the irresistible cheerleader punk of The Rogers Sisters; The New Orderish manifestos of Radio 4; the deranged Lou Reedy rant of Pharmacists; an oddly lovely acoustic ‘Our Time (Year To Be Hated)’ from Yeah Yeah Yeahs (in disguise here as Unitard); and a charmingly petulant live version of The Strokes’ ‘New York City Cops’. Then there’s the Cure-ious yowling of The Rapture; the thinky Joe Jacksonish Complaint Post-Punk of The Natural History; the screamy Zeppelin-v-Ramones monsters of rock deathmatch of LCD Soundsystem; the shattered beauty of Interpol, and (eureka, someone who actually owns records made after 1985!) the Flaming Lips-tastic Secret Machines.