We asked Pitchfork writers and editors to share their personal highs and lows of 2013. Check back for more installments of My Year in Music throughout the next two weeks.
Favorite Tracks of 2013:
01 Deafheaven: "Dream House"
02 Perfect Pussy: "I"
03 Kanye West: "I'm In It"
04 Drake: "Worst Behavior"
05 Majical Cloudz: "Bugs Don't Buzz"
06 Prurient: "You Show Great Spirit"
07 A$AP Ferg: "Shabba" [ft A$AP Rocky]
08 Iceage: "Ecstasy"
09 Joanna Gruesome: "Sugarcrush"
10 Waxahatchee: "Swan Dive"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
Most Played Song of 2013: Deafheaven's "Dream House". I love this song, and would listen to it a lot anyhow, but it helped that my son Henry also loves it, refers to is as "Super Hero Music," and asks me to play it every morning while he does what he calls his "Superman Dance". Imagine a three-year old kid combining hardcore-style floor punching with breakdancing and interpretive yoga, and you're halfway there.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: The new Bill Callahan album, Dream River, inspired me to pull out all my old Smog records, which I do return to from time to time. I ended up listening to the Kicking a Couple Around EP more than any of them. It's so spare and dark and basically perfect. It didn't get its due at the time but looking back I feel like gives a sense of where Callahan would end up almost 20 years later.
Musical Highlights: I organized this two-day event, Basilica Soundscape, up in Hudson, N.Y. with Melissa Auf Der Maur, Brian DeRan, and Tony Stone. We had this one part where Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler directed/conducted a simultaneous performance by Evian Christ, Julianna Barwick, Pharmakon, and Pig Destroyer. It was an idea Matthew and I had come up with one night, kind of jokingly, and to see it work out—and sound as beautiful as it did—was very satisfying. (It was also just nice to be a part of a "festival" that didn't have over-the-top sponsorship or feel like a festival.) Other highlights included Carcass at St. Vitus, Converge at St. Vitus—and just about any other band at St. Vitus, definitely the best thing to happen to NYC live music in a long time. I also enjoyed making ongoing Twitter jokes about Bon Iver's "Holocene", the Emo Revival, and folks like Riff Raff, Jay Z, and Lou Barlow crying themselves to sleep. That, and singingMajical Cloudz songs as lullabies to my kids.
Musical Lowlights: So many people died. And the Pixies.