Saddle Creek is one of my favorite labels. After my initial exposure to some Bright Eyes/Cursive tracks (via AudioGalaxy, RIP), I’ve since bought just about every album put out by the label (yes, including the Bright Eyes Christmas Album). Which led me to a slight predicament — the Saddle Creek Store is currently offering a free copy of the Saddle Creek 50 sampler with an order of $25 or more, which would be quite tempting to give as a gift, but would involve finding some stuff I didn’t already have. After looking around, I did find some worthwhile albums to pick up. The first, Rilo Kiley’s Barsuk Records debut album. The second, the Amos House Collection, Vol 2, which has tracks from Elliot Smith, Spoon, Bright Eyes, etc.
Also, picked up a Park Avenue album (the one sample track [RA] sounded great), and also the Fizzle Like a Flood album. The entire album is available to sample online.
Lastly, Hopeless Records is currently having a $1 sampler sale. I’m not much into punk/pop-punk nowadays, but the Weakerthans and Atom and His Package tracks definitely make it worthwhile, a no-brainer at $1/pop.