Indie Comes Together for 'Living Bridge'

Looking for a crash course in indie rock?

Good luck.

With so much music being released each week, and with so many music critics intent on being the first to declare the Next Big Thing, looking for a decent indie sampler is nigh impossible.

Sure, you could buy Vice Records’ This Is NEXT, a fifteen-song sampler released last summer that oxymoronically boasts “Indie’s Biggest Hits.” But while This is NEXT might familiarize you with artists like the Shins, Cat Power, the Hold Steady and Of Montreal, it’s not the kind of thing you’d want to be caught downloading (having a company tell you what music to listen to kind of defeats the purpose).

Or you could pick up a few ultra-hip movie soundtracks like last year's Spiderman 3 which contains tunes by the Walkmen, Black Mountain, Rogue Wave and the Flaming Lips. But quite often these soundtracks are little more than studio outtake roundups containing tunes the artists themselves deemed unworthy of inclusion on their 'real' albums.

Not a good entry point for the curious.

But Brooklyn-based Rare Book Room Studios has quite possibly overridden these problems with Living Bridge. Released in February, this two-disc compilation boasts a bevy of indie music darlings (Black Dice, the Silver Jews, Deerhunter, Blood on the Wall, Avey Tare of Animal Collective), all of whom recorded songs specifically for this compilation. There’s not a whack track here.

The big selling point of Living Bridge is that the songs have been sequenced and mixed so that they run together, creating a seamless listening experience – a rarity in this age of 99-cent downloads.

But the really cool thing is, rather than looking back on ‘Indie’s Biggest Hits,’ it stands to surprise the listener with work by future greats. Highlights for this listener include TK Webb’s channeling of Bruce Springsteen on The Devil’s a Dork, Samara Lubelski’s ethereal Ego Blossoms, Sam Jayne’s churning rocker Darker Still and a song called Hats vs. Headbands by Tomorrow’s Friend – a band I would not be surprised to find out is the Strokes as fronted by Yoko Ono.

And staying ahead of the curve is really what indie is all about.