Grand Slang: 1990-2000

Here we have a good-but-not-great anthology of lost songs and remixes from City Slang - home over the years to alt-faves as diverse as Gallon Drunk, Hole and Sebadoh, and more recently Calexico, Yo La Tengo and Lambchop - who are celebrating ten years in 2000.

Several of these tracks have the feel of directionless experimentation - an aesthetic which is fine for B-sides, but works less well in groups of 11.

Contributions from Salaryman, Wheat and Yo La Tengo are disappointingly non-essential. As well, ecstatic gong-toting puppeteers The Flaming Lips, for whose music, legend has it, Christof Ellinghaus founded City Slang ten years ago, are, oddly, notable by their absence. Ironically, exactly their kind of sparkling weirdness and invention is what this record could do with having more of.

On the upside, Glaswegian newcomers Larmousse are a revelation, a Red House Painters teased gently out of shape and lit up by comet showers; and a remix of Lambchop's 'Up With People' reaches their usual, slightly woozy, cruising altitude, with laughing-gassed organs and their everpresent chorus of Ordinary-Folk lovelies.

Tortoise's 'Madison Avenue' features Casio-keyboard pleasantries interrupted by some gorgeously irrelevant pedal steel. And Calexico's mariachi hallucinations are stripped down and given acid trailbacks and head-voices - can't be bad.

Otherwise, this'll do little more than have you rushing to seek out the originals.