Carol Noonan's first compilation draws entirely on material recorded after her she founded her own record label in 1999; there are no tracks from her group Knots and Crosses or from the three solo albums she made for Philo Records between 1995 and 1997. That said, it lives up to its title as a sampler. This collection is not intended as presenting the best of her albums Self Titled, Big Iron, Christmas, Somebody's Darling: Songs of War, Loss and Remembrance, and The Water Is Wide, but rather as providing representative samples of those discs along with some other material. Noonan has tended toward a bittersweet mood on most of her recordings, from the despairing Self Titled to the war-themed Somebody's Darling, writing many of her own songs and also including appropriate traditional folk material. That mood rules the early part of this disc, with Emma, one of the key tracks from Self Titled, leading things off and being followed by Without a Trace, a song about a teenage kidnapping from The Water Is Wide (a duo album with pianist Dana Cunningham that, like this album, is intended to help raise money for an arts center on Noonan's property in Maine). Two more songs from Self Titled follow before the tone of the album lightens slightly with a couple of tracks from the Western-themed Big Iron. But the real relief from the gloom comes with the previously unreleased Punkin, a humorous spoken word story about an aggressive pig used as a guard dog and its encounter with an antiques dealer. Then comes Captain Concrete, Noonan's rocking tribute to the man who poured the floor for her arts center, another new one. Song from Harry, previously released only as a single, is a song Noonan wrote for the funeral of two fisherman friends who were lost at sea. A cover of Sting's Fields of Gold from The Water Is Wide is followed by two selections from Christmas, the original Christmas of 64, in which Noonan recalls receiving her first guitar, and the traditional Oh Holy Night. The previously unreleased A St. Pattys Day Thought is another spoken word track in which Noonan reflects on her mixed feelings about the song Danny Boy in connection with her father, and it is naturally followed by her performance of the song. Thus, there are enough rarities and new tracks for this sampler to be valuable to Noonan fans, while it also gives a good sense of her recording career since 1999 for potential new listeners. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi

1		Emma
2		Without a Trace
3		Lost Soul
4		Unquiet Grave
5		Red River Valley
6		Down in the Valley
7		Punkin
8		Captain Concrete
9		Song from Harry
10		Fields of Gold
11		Christmas of 64
12		Oh Holy Night
13		A St. Pattys Day Thought
14		Danny Boy