Album review: Rough Trade Shops - Counter Culture 07

When it comes to compilation albums, the ideal is surely an eclectic selection with an impeccable ear for quality and originality - three qualities that the Rough Trade Shops have always embodied, and which is reflected in the contents of their yearly collection, Counter Culture 07.

With more than forty tracks spread over two CDs, there’s bound to be something for everyone on Counter Culture 07 – provided “everyone” doesn’t include your average vanilla pop enthusiast, of course. The flip-side of that is there’s going to be a few tracks you’re not so keen on, and possibly one or two you plain don’t like.

But what the hell – new music broadens the mind simply by being heard. The best analogy I can think of is that the Rough Trade compilations are closer to the ethos of the much-missed John Peel show than anything else … and anyone who tries to claim that the John Peel show wasn’t an important cornerstone of UK alternative music culture is asking for a slap.

So, reach into the lucky dip and see what you get. Much like the Rough Trade Shops themselves, Counter Culture 07 has plenty to offer the fan of raucous rock. How about the jagged wide-eyed psychedelic punk of “Everybody’s Down” by No Age? Or perhaps the Tibetan stoner-drone of Om performing “Unitive Knowledge Of The Godhead”? Or Mika Miko’s “Jogging Song”, which sounds like a bunch of speed-freak high-school punks doing a mangled spoof cover of “My Sharona”?

That’s just for starters, though. Now pull funny faces to the epic (and justifiably massive) “Atlas” by Battles; chill out with a cigarette an a bottle of cough syrup to the methadone country of “Be Still” by Woods; jive like a crazy hep-cat to the cartoon pseudo-sixties fuzzpop of “Losin’ Time” by Wooden Shjips; rage to the furious hardcore attack of Fucked Up’s “Year Of The Pig”; shuffle drunkenly to the Magik Markers doing a blanked-out sub-Ramones punk number called “Body Rot”.

But why stop there? Counter Culture 07 is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates – you never quite know what you’re going to get. I don’t care how staunch a die-hard rock fan you are, you’re sure to get more than a few laughs out of Dan le Sac and Scroobius Pip’s “Thou Shalt Always Kill”, and Julian Cope makes an appearance which will amuse, enrage or baffle you, depending on what sort of mindset you have at the time.

Then there’s the doped-up mumbling of Von Sudenfed’s “Fledermaus Can’t Get It”, which sounds very much like The Fall’s Mark E. Smith on a ketamine binge. And the tongue-in-cheek faux-disco camp of “Rights For Gays” by John Maus. And the frankly petrifying “VTR” by Andrew Liles, which sounds like a movie of an automated toy-factory full of bad hallucinations being narrated by a stern and husky Japanese man …

I could go on forever – or at least until I’d listed every track on Counter Culture 07. But by now you should have got my point – which is that, like all the Rough Trade Shops compilations before it, Counter Culture 07 is a playground and sweetshop rolled into one for the adventurous music fan. Do yourself a favour, and get stuck into to a buffet banquet.

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