Label samplers are always fun, but this one's somehow less fun than it ought to be. A lot of good indie stuff seems to funnel into Australia through Spunk (the 4ad acts are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, but there are plenty more) and, given that, I would've expected a Spunk sampler to be good value (value for time, if the nature of the value needs to be specified - given that it was free, I can hardly quibble on the basis of value for money!), but instead it's kinda boring.
It's in the nature of these cds that one doesn't listen to them closely - instead, it's left up to the songs themselves to leap out and demand attention. Here, though, none of the 18 songs have really done so. Apart from Sufjan's "Chicago" and the Arcade Fire's "In The Backseat", which I already knew, the only ones which have left any particular impression are:
* Akron/Family - "Running, Returning" (post-millennial, post-Kid A indie-rock; I kind of got over it after the first couple of listens, but it seems to be growing on me again)
* Smog - "I Feel Like The Mother Of The World" (fairly good, but you know, so far so Smog)
* Holly Throsby - "As The Night Dies" (better than most of the current crop of Just Another (Female) Australian Singer-Songwriters, from what I've heard of them - not the sort of song to be transcendental, but the album might be good)
* Antony & The Johnsons - "Fistful Of Love" (the first Antony & The Johnsons song I've heard since the spectacular "River of Sorrow", and hence my first since they burst into the alternative mainstream a while back and everyone started talking them up - it's nice, and I like it)
The rest of it is fairly nondescript 'of the moment' indie - quite samey in a lot of respects (one surprising element of the samey-ness being a folk current running through the cd). Not unpleasant - just not particularly good. Still, I'm not complaining - it'd be churlish to whinge about free music!
