Like most die-hard Killers' fans, I had this album pre-ordered, with high expectations. After two simply magnificent, yet totally different albums being churned out within a few years, the pressure was on to produce another album of that calibre. If you were expecting an album with all the fantastic tunes of Hot Fuss, and more of the experimental style explored in Sam's Town, then I'm afraid this probably will disappoint.
It seems almost cowardly to release an album containing B-sides with only a few bits of new material, including the frankly dreadful single "Tranquilize", and a bad re-recording of "Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll." Flowers' voice clearly changed between the 2004 recording of Hot Fuss and Sam's Town (2005-6), and this album contains a mix of the two styles making the whole album jar with a lack of continuity.
For me, Sam's Town was a fantastic album, because the running order had a very clear ebb and flow, and it seemed almost wrong to play it on shuffle. Each track follows another leaving us with 44.14 minutes which sounds like one epic song. However, because Sawdust is a collection of rare tracks and B-sides, there is no sense of this, no sense of a change in style, which made Sam's Town so ground breaking as The Killers' maintained their popularity despite a big change in sound.
Sawdust is a mixed bag, with the bad mushed into the untidy mix with the good. The worst track on the album is definitely "Who Let You Go" which smacks of MCR attempts at "anthemic" indiepop; along with the travesty that is the Remix of "Mr Brightside" which mutilates and sucks all the energy out of one of the best indie-anthems of our time, and the album is all the worse for it. This can be forgiven however, in light of the sparkling gems we can find encrusted within. Best tracks being "Change Your Mind" which is just fantastically catchy, energetic and is an embodiment of why I love The Killers, and the slightly darker "All The Pretty Faces" which sounds as though it was taken straight out of Sam's Town.
In conclusion, it's a decent time filler: some of the tracks rise above mediocrity after a few listens, and the beautiful Abbey Road recordings make it worth the money. But really what it might make up for with the rarity of some of the tracks, it lacks severely in a sense of continuity as an album. I only hope that the next album can recreate the magic of the first two, and overshadow this disappointment.