'The Trip: Created by Jarvis Cocker and Steve Mackey' (Family) Released 13/03/06

If there’s a project capable of proving that the concept still carries value other than monetary, it’s this titanic 35-track helping of hip sounds from Jarvis Cocker and Pulp chum Steve Mackey. Ranging from the Moondog’s heavenly harp recital ‘Pastoral’ to the Birthday Party’s raving mad ‘Release The Bats’, a blast of berserk swamp-blues from the days when Nick Cave was more likely to set fire to pianos than sit at one for a spot of serenading, the thrills offered by this Trip are more plastic than lysergic. Or at least it’s probable that Cocker and Mackey had to plough through acres of charity shop vinyl to unearth this treasure chest of compelling curios (Elton Motello’s crazed glam stomp ‘Jet Boy Jet Girl’, pub-blues belter Johnny Wakelin’s chant-powered Rumble In The Jungle commemoration ‘In Zaire’, Suicide man Alan Vega’s lethargic lunge at rockabilly on ‘Jukebox Baby’), curious covers (OMD going cut-price Kraftwerk on Velvet Underground’s ‘Waiting For The Man’) and genuine gems (The uneasy truce between a fragile folk ballad and unrelenting rhythm track on Bob Lind’s ‘Cool Summer’, Arlo Guthrie’s incredible folk-blues fusion of Fred Neil, Bob Dylan and Nick Drake’s Bryter Layter on the haunting ‘I’m Going Home’, the potent bargain-bin psychedelia of 'Flashing Light' by Screaming Lord Sutch).

It’s not all submerged in obscurity, though, as the Beach Boys pop in with the sublime ‘Feel Flows’, Jonathan Richman takes a wrong turn en route to Zion and ends up with an ‘Egyptian Reggae’ and The Fall go funky on the superlative-exhausting ‘Lost In Music’. There’s not a duff track in the bunch, although reactions to Sonny Bono’s square anti-drugs sermon ‘Pammies On A Bummer’ will vary depending on the recipient's kitsch-stomaching abilities.

The proceedings flag during the last fifth of this 2-hour ride, but it’s unavoidable as even a track as razor-sharp as Dion’s fluid jazzbo rendition of Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ can’t help sounding a bit blunt next to the nightmarish portrayal of urban squalor on ‘Beasley Street’, punk-poet John Cooper Clarke’s jaw-dropping 1980 update of Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’, the most colossal performance here and easily worth the price of admission alone.