So last year I made this end of year mix CD, one part best-of to two parts encoding the memories of the year into a soundtrack. I started working on a 2005 playlist, and it's hard. Because I liked a lot of music, and it's fairly disparate, but I want to work in a lot. And a decent amount went down this year, I suppose. It's not done yet, and many of the things are minor, or if they're not minor, they're not things that effected me personally. It's not like that at the end of 2003 when I ran around with This Boy Is Exhausted stuck in my head.

I know it's going to start off with The Mountain Goats' This Year (the version off the vinyl edition of The Sunset Tree). And there's probably going to be this song off the new Dirty Three album that Cat Power sings on, because of hurricane allusions.

I should maybe do the thing with editing and segueing the songs into each other with fades and stuff. I should maybe not even be working on it yet. I want to put The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on there but it has its own segue built into the end, into the next song on the album.

It's already over an hour long.

Maybe the reason the music's been good is the same reason the mix is hard to make, because of the multitude of feelings and mood contained within single songs: Every song feels like a segue, except for the occasional thing like the Dirty Three/Cat Power collaboration. This really works for albums though. But on mixes, even the stuff where the segue from track to track is smooth, the constant varying mood gets weird after a few tracks.

Yeah, Mountain Goats into A-Frames into Dirty Three doesn't work.

The only song I'm married to is Need New Body's Poppa B. I could maybe make two mixes. That might end up being what I do, that way I can repeat the same band.

Right now I'm listening to The Hold Steady's Cattle And The Creeping Things, going into the Silver Jews, How Can I Love You If You Won't Lie Down. I almost put Don't Let Me Explode on a mix for my mom, and maybe if I did two, that could go into the Dirty Three/Cat Power thing.

I will keep you posted. Two mixes... Yes, for I contain multitudes.

EDIT: Actually I think it's coming together. As one mix. I might ditch A-Frames (Flies), or Psychic Paramount (Para5), or Black Dice (Street Dude), or switch the Animal Collective song at the end (currently, Banshee Beat) for another that accomplishes the same ends. Right now I'm leaning toward maybe ditching the Psychic Paramount, as it's maybe a bit too long for something that one-note, although it's an awesome note, it might not be the most mix CD friendly one. (It's a note of pure loud rock propulsion through the future, and yes highly recommended.)