"Wow, New York Just like I pictured it. Sky-scrapers and everything..." And so begins Stevie Wonder's 'Living For The City', as an awestruck, NYC virgin contemplates the limitless horizons filling his eyes. Within seconds, our naïve fool is downtown before a merciless judge on a spurious drug bust, his future in the dirt.
New York's a city of dangerous extremes, as this compilation, musically certainly, reflects. Cosmopolitan, edgy, capricious and boundary-bending, you have to wade through serious slime and hyperbole to witness the gold glistening from the sidewalk.
'Yes New York' twists its title from the Brian Eno-produced 1978 collection 'No New York'. Featuring experimental left-field 'big-hitters' like DNA and Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, that record reflected a period of unwieldy sonic stagnation in the city and, for many, identified a flat pulse. Clearly that's not the case here.
This 16-track compilation features a string of bands who've given the city some swagger in the imposing wake of 9/11. Of the heavyweights, The Strokes deliver a ragged, furious but rather pointless live smash through 'New York City Cops', while Yeah Yeah Yeahs are disguised as 'Unitard' for a torch-lit, unreleased run through the adorable, versus the world anthem 'Our Time'.
Interpol's towering, fittingly titled 'NYC', is a daunting snapshot of bruised skylines and drifting trash, which, alongside the punishing rhythmic attack of Radio 4's 'Save Your City', amplifies the debt owed to the eighties, cloaked UK artisans such as Joy Division and the key elements infecting this compilation: Scabrous, metallic guitars, vigorous bass and a belligerent, defiant attitude.
Perhaps the only genuinely challenging development through this period has been the work of electro-punk-funk daddies the DFA. Production credits for the NYC label here alone total four, including Radio 4: Alongside LCD Soundsystem's throwaway, emphatically-lost-their-edge blues-fug jam of 'Tired', you get the Tom Verlaine 'voiced', repetitive dancefloor shuffle of The Rapture's 'Olio' and a vague remix of the cute but feisty disco of Le Tigre's 'Deceptacon'.
On a lesser-known tip, 'Zero Point' by The Rogers Sisters treads a razor-fine line between irritating, 'ironic' B52's schtick and loping, sprightly garage rock, while Longwave's ponderously emotive 'Next Plateau' and the wiry, caustic 'Strangler' by Calla allow each to reaffirm their position in the queue for the bright lights. More intriguingly, the Velvet Underground and a brain-wronged, embryonic Flaming Lips collide on 'What Used To Be French' by Secret Machines and The Walkmen, like an immaculately drunk U2, stumble through the unhinged drama of 'Rue The Day'.
Cannibalising a musical canvas splattered with decades of paint, little here is truly original and the quality veers throughout, as is inevitable from the recordings of one - albeit artistically ferocious - city. However, in the space of ten seconds and one glorious line on 'Our Time' - "The kids in the street, whisper sounds that sweep, the stars under their feet. It's the year to be hated" - 'Yes New York' brandishes a statement of aspiration capturing everything you need to know about NYC, rock'n'roll and this compilation.
