I’ve only heard a smattering of Silver Sprocket bands in the past, but I’m completely sold on the label based on this sampler. This is the best comp record that I’ve heard in ages. Some straight-up punk, some pop punk, some ska, some stuff that sounds like underbelly wryly-humored singer-songwriter tuneage, and what may be some one-man band stuff or something close thereto. I hesitate to indicate who all is on the line-up because 1) there’s a shitload of different acts on this; 2) I don’t want to favor any one act—I liked the whole thing that much; and 3) I can’t really attest to which acts people will know or not. If you look at the Silver Sprocket website, you’ve got the lineup for this record. To that end, the comp has a diverse sound, but everything here works really, really well together. Yeah, it’s a sampler for a record label, but this stands up to any comp out there in my book. I’d pay good money for this, and like so many others these days I’ve become a cheap bastard who unfortunately thinks twice about buying records. And then there’s the glorious denouement: the back of the insert claims “this CD is awesome even though it is free”—truer words are rarely spoken.
–Eric Carlson (Silver Sprocket, silversprocket.net)