Consumer Guide Album

Gimme Indie Rock V. 1 [K-Tel, 2001]
If U.K. Virgin's Best Punk Album in the World . . . Ever! was the ultimate K-Tel joke, this must be the postultimate. Reducing an anti/post-commercial movement/tendency to 30 putatively/frequently catchy songs, it represents indie far more accurately than Michael Azerrad's severe rockism--boys and a few girls, Yanks and a few furriners, talents and a few geniuses, guitars and a few synths, ugly and pretty and both at once. Half the bands released good albums once and a few still do. Most of these are in print if anything strikes your fancy, though the track that takes you home may not lead you to the album that'll pay the rent. Traces of a world gone by. Intimations of the one we live in now. A-