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 The Knife: "Full of Fire"
02 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: "Higgs Boson Blues"
03 Haim: "The Wire"
04 Kanye West: "New Slaves"
05 Kurt Vile: "Goldtone"
06 Yamantaka // Sonic Titan: "One"
07 Daft Punk: "Touch"
08 Deafheaven: "Dream House"
09 Arcade Fire: "Reflektor"
10 Foxygen: "No Destruction"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 The Knife: Shaking the Habitual
02 Fuck Buttons: Slow Focus
03 Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
04 Kanye West: Yeezus
05 Polvo: Siberia
06 Blood Orange: Cupid Deluxe
07 Janelle Monáe: The Electric Lady
08 Swans: Not Here/Not Now
09 Neko Case: The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight...
10 Ty Segall: Sleeper
Most Played Song of 2013: According to iTunes, it's Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "Higgs Boson Blues", which had the advantage of coming out very early in the year (and also the advantage of being one of the most audacious/hilarious songs he's written). But I'll always remember the first time I heard it. I got emailed a promo copy of Push the Sky Away the day my son was born last January and, for obvious reasons, I wasn't able to download it right away. About a week later, I went out on a grocery run—my real first bit of alone time following the birth—and listened to the album on headphones as I walked through the supermarket. "Higgs Boson Blues" came on while I was in the dairy section. Comparison-shopping for yogurt value-packs has never felt like so apocalyptic.
An Old Album I Rediscovered This Year: Most expedient way to erase the memory of that new Black Flag album? Revisit the best album they never released: i.e., the post-Damaged/pre-My War legal-limbo sessions heard on the eternally badass Complete 1982 Demos.
Musical Highlights: Two things that seemed impossible at the top of 2013—a new My Bloody Valentine album and a Replacements reunion show—becoming real and not sucking in the slightest. Getting to see two Savages shows on consecutive nights last March in venues small enough for Jehnny Beth's shadowboxing fist-thrusts to make you flinch. Kanye premiering "New Slaves" on "SNL". Japandroids playing the first-ever show at Toronto's Adelaide Music Hall and having their front-of-house monitors used as buoys for people escaping the overflowing mosh pit. Listening to The Knife's "Full of Fire" over and over and over again and feeling like the song was doing different things each time I heard it, like that old Mad magazine flexi-single with eight separate grooves. Fuzz capping an insane basement club show on the night of my birthday with an encore of "Blitzkrieg Bop", "Till the End of the Day" and "21st Century Schizoid Man."
Musical Lowlights: Realizing that I had been listening to Swans' The Seer, my favorite album of 2012, in the wrong order this whole time, because it got uploaded into my iTunes alphabetically. And I've been having a really hard time adjusting to the actual song order, because, trust me, the alphabetical sequence is perfect.