Various: Under the Influence

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

The Flying Nun label has given itself a high-concept, 21st-birthday present - a quickly recorded, beautifully packaged album on which its present roster, a few veterans and some ring-ins, deliver a mix of Nun oldies and new songs.

Mostly done in front of telly doco cameras in March, the double CD is a strange lopsided thing. A nice idea and all that, but the backwards-forwards concept does stop it being a cohesive album and something representing "21 Years of Flying Nun Records" ... well, how can it?

It has a predecessor in a cassette EP of bands covering other bands titled Roger Sings The Hits, recorded over one night and sold the next evening at shows celebrating the label's 10th anniversary in 1991.

The Clean and Chris Knox were on that one too, and here they and fellow veteran Graeme Downes rather steal the show. Downes, despite having parted the nunnery years ago, offers the album's best new moment with the track Same Old New World which, while dueting with Knox, ambitiously pastiches six or so Nun songs, making something weird, brooding and quite marvellous.

Among the other highlights: Knox's Tall Dwarfs' partnership does a respectful version of the Straitjacket Fits' If I Were You; former head Straitjacket Shayne Carter joins HDU for their two tracks, one a blood-curdling cover of the 3Ds' Man on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; betchadupa make a valiant attempt at the 3Ds' Outer Space; and the D4 are in big dumb fun mode on their own Get Loose and their take on Bored Games' Joe 90.

As for the foreigners, ex-Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus does a fey take on the Verlaines' Death and the Maiden, and loopy Aussie electronic act Gerling's cover of the Dead C's Crazy I Know is a worryingly uninviting and irrelevant start.

Oh, and you can just imagine that Garageland's cute surf guitar version of the Chills' Heavenly Pop Hit will be the accompanying doco's jaunty theme.

Under the Influence is a ready-made collector's item, but as its 19 tracks meander to the Clean's neatly noisy finale, the thought remains that the album celebrates neither the label's past nor present very well.