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 Autre Ne Veut: "Play by Play"
02 Haim: "The Wire"
03 Majical Cloudz: "Bugs Don’t Buzz"
04 Deafheaven: "Dream House"
05 Rhye: "Open"
06 Crystal & S. Koshi: "Break the Dawn"
07 Glass Candy: "Warm in the Winter"
08 A$AP Ferg: "Shabba"
09 Protomartyr: "Jumbo’s"
10 Daughn Gibson: "Kissin on the Blacktop"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
02 Bill Callahan: Dream River
03 Sky Ferreira: Night Time, My Time
04 Kurt Vile: Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze
05 Majical Cloudz: Impersonator
06 Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold
07 Eleanor Friedberger: Personal Record
08 Ashley Monroe: Like a Rose
09 DJ Koze: Amygdala
10 DJ Rashad: Double Cup
Most Played Song of 2013: One of the reasons I don't trust iTunes as a metric of my most played music of the year is that when I get really fixated on a song I'll start it over long before iTunes registers it as having been played, kind of like how rats will compulsively press a button when they discover it gives them a sugar pellet. Conversely, I'll find songs that bring me a sense of peace and well-being when played at low volumes for hours on end, but I don't know that I could say I'm really listening to these songs—it's more like I'm bathing in them, or breathing them like they were air. Anyway, Bill Callahan's "Small Plane" was the new song I played most this year, and Haim's "The Wire" was the new song I listened to most ravenously. I also spent countless hours running in my neighborhood to Theo Parrish's re-edit of Etta James's "In the Basement", which is peerless, and deserves a place at almost any social function.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: Hard question to which I will give three answers: Chet Baker Sings, the Roches' The Roches and Thelonious Monk's Solo Monk.
Musical Highlights: Nothing compares to the hours I spent listening to Willie Nelson's Stardust in my kitchen at sundown, moderately stoned and cooking dinner for the woman who in six months I will legally be able to call my wife. Also, watching said woman theatrically drop her mic and walk off the karaoke floor at a Best Western after the KJ turned down her volume during a performance of Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry."
Musical Lowlights: Hearing a wedding band in Cincinnati, Ohio, soundcheck with an unimpeachable rendition of Steely Dan's "Peg" and then not actually play it after the ceremony. Had I known, I would have gone home earlier.