Released Monday, June 26 Rough Trade, not content with being the label that brought us The Smiths, The Strokes and The Libertines, as well as being largely responsible for the very concept of the independent label, also do a pretty good line in compilatio

Released Monday, June 26

Rough Trade, not content with being the label that brought us The Smiths, The Strokes and The Libertines, as well as being largely responsible for the very concept of the independent label, also do a pretty good line in compilations.

This latest release looks at the singer-songwriter, that most captivating of artists, and takes as its focus your good old-fashioned song.

Some of the masters are represented, like Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, Robert Wyatt and Cadaverous Australian doom-monger Nick Cave - what would a singer-songwriter

compilation be like without its fair share of people like this?

It is the younger crop of artists that makes this album, however, such as Elliot Smith , James Yorkston, the sublime Cat Power, and Lou Barlow.