This is the end

Way back in September, I signed up to take part in Swiss Toni's second annual Shuffleathon, whereby each participant makes a CD for another drawn at random to listen to, review and (hopefully) enjoy. I'm still waiting for the compilation assigned to me to drop through the letterbox, but the verdict's now in on my effort, which winged its way to the stereo of Ian of Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From? - and it's not exactly glowing...

For the record, the tracklisting was as follows:

1. 'Trilogy' - Sonic Youth
2. 'Party The Baby Off' - The Icarus Line
3. 'She Can Do What She Wants' - Field Music
4. 'Feel Like Goin' Home' - Spiritualized
5. 'We're No Here' - Mogwai
6. 'Anonymous Collective' - Stereolab
7. 'Road To Joy' - Bright Eyes
8. 'In The Backseat' - The Arcade Fire
9. 'Wicked Game' - Giant Drag
10. 'Ambulance Blues' - Neil Young
11. 'Sixteen Straws' - The Drones
12. 'The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes' - The Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band

Entitled The End Is Nigh, it's a collection of album closers (well, Giant Drag's cover of the Chris Isaak song is technically a bonus track, but creative licence and all that...).

Two factors influenced my choices.

Firstly, having taken part in the inaugural Shuffleathon last year and done the whole "tracks that mean something to you / that you love" thing then, I wanted to take a different tack and pull together a themed collection featuring none of the bands and artists that made it onto the CD last time out.

Secondly, being in Oxfordshire without access to the vast bulk of my record collection here in Cardiff for two months, I had to make do with what was already in my limited iTunes library.

Given that in putting the CD together I was much less concerned to avoid awkward, difficult or long songs this time around, and actually set out to create something challenging, Ian's decidedly mixed response hardly came as a surprise.

While I'm very fond of all these songs, some of them extremely so ('Trilogy', 'In The Backseat', 'Sixteen Straws', 'The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes'), they're not all favourites - 'Anonymous Collective', for instance, was included as something a bit different, but there are several better songs on the Emperor Tomato Ketchup album. 'Party The Baby Off' and 'She Can Do What She Wants' - coincidentally the two tracks that Ian enjoyed most - were almost left off, as they don't really fit the overall mood of the compilation (which Ian characterised as "reflective" - inevitable for a collection of album-closers, I guess), but in the end they kept their place because the opportunity to introduce someone to two bands who are in my view unjustly unknown was too good to pass up.

My choices also reflected the moment of compilation: 'Feel Like Goin' Home' and 'Road To Joy' are both on albums I was listening to repeatedly around the time it was compiled (Pure Phase and I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning respectively), while, once I'd settled on the theme, there was never any question of the CD opening with anything other than 'Trilogy', the memory of Sonic Youth's performance of Daydream Nation in its entirety still being fresh.

Aside from 'Trilogy', Ian was distinctly unimpressed with 'We're No Here' and 'Ambulance Blues' (which I love for its early 70s bitter death-of-the-hippie-dream vibe), but was most scathing about 'Sixteen Straws'. Clearly, ten minute narratives about violent crime and suicide among convicts and deportees in turn-of-the-century Australia aren't to everyone's tastes. To me, though, this and the album it's from, Gala Mill, would be the perfect soundtrack to a film like Nick Cave's 'The Proposition'. Harrowing, bloody and disquieting - but in a good way.

In other music-related activity, Swiss Toni invited me back for another stab at his regular Friday Earworms feature, which is now up here. If you do nothing else, take a listen to the Flight Of The Conchords song...