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 Crash of Rhinos: "Opener"
03 Youth Lagoon: "Mute"
04 The 1975: "Sex"
05 Autre Ne Veut: "Play By Play"
06 Drake: "Hold On We're Going Home"
07 Iron Chic: "Spooky Action At A Distance"
08 The Wonder Years: "There, There"
09 Balance & Composure: "Reflection"
10 The Dangerous Summer: "Catholic Girls"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Deafheaven: Sunbather
02 Kanye West: Yeezus
03 Local Natives: Hummingbird
04 Kurt Vile: Wakin On A Pretty Daze
05 Los Campesinos!: No Blues
06 The World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die: Whenever, If Ever
07 Autre Ne Veut: Anxiety
08 Crash of Rhinos: Knots
09 Baths: Obsidian
10 Sigur Ros: Kveikur
Your Most Played Song in 2013: I've been consistently listening to Soulja Boy's Juice mixtape for the past three years, so I have no idea how the title track's video escaped me until 2013. Since YouTube does't maintain an individual play count the way iTunes does, I can only rely on guesstimates in saying that "Juice" was my most-played song of this calendar year, but I don't think there's much doubt. In lieu of morning meditation, I played at least some portion of "Juice" twice a day, for months at a time. Not just for the quality of the song itself—a man can only live off so much "Zan With That Lean"—but because it's the most effective OTC anti-depressant on the market. Even after the 200th or so viewing, the way Soulja, Kwony Cash and J-Money discuss during the intro who has the juice at that given moment never fails to brighten my day—given their enthusiasm, you'd think they're having this conversation for the first time, like the song itself had not made it clear that Soulja's got the juice. Similarly, he tells his jeweler, "you stay with the ice" as if that too is something Soulja is considering for the first time—even though we're led to believe this establishment exists for the sole purpose of Stacks On Deck Money Gang's random impulse buys. And did Soulja have to ask the jeweler for his CD back? And if not, does he carry a stack of burned Juice CDs with him every time he goes to the mall? Are there alternate cuts of "Juice" where SODMG are posted up at an Auntie Anne's or Sephora?
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: In 2013, I spent more time in my car than I have in probably a decade, so I started to get very nostalgic for the major-label hip-hop records I purchased between 2002 and 2003, played maybe five times and subsequently sold back to Disc-Go-Round to buy Yuengling as an anesthetic for the 40 hours a week I gave to a company that really had a Hawaiian Shirt Day. I don't know if they've aged particularly well, but my perspective has. See, used to be that I'd evaluate them on the basis of "Does this 70-minute body of work justify its purchase price, which is roughly equal to my hourly wage at this mind-numbing office job I am driving to?" These days, it's "Does this give me the singles that caused me to buy it in the first place, plus 25 additional minutes of music that sound great in my car? Also, does it reminds me of a time when I seriously couldn't see far enough into the future to envision a time when I wouldn't want to eat Lean Pockets four times a week?" And that gives you a much more positive and lenient attitude towards the artistic merits of Lil Flip's Undaground Legend, N.O.R.E.'s God's Favorite, Nellyville and even The Blueprint2.
Musical Highlights: Deafheaven on Twitter; Drake's pronunciation of "shrimp" in "305 To My City"; the ad-libs on Trap Lord; the guitar solo in Youth Lagoon's "Mute"; every Matt Korvette interview; Swans' Pitchfork Festival set, specifically Christoph Hahn's pedal steel slide/haircomb; Deftones and Glassjaw waiting until a year where I could afford tickets to do a show together; watching people my age and half my age absolutely lose their shit during "Freakish" and really the entirety of Saves the Day's show at the Troubadour; Taylor Rice chipping his tooth on the mic during the encore of Local Natives' Greek Theatre show; Desaparecidos covering Joyce Manor's "Constant Headache"; the pause before the 1:18 point of Kanye West's "I'm In It"; the Dangerous Summer somehow making 2013's best Jimmy Eat World and Kings of Leon song at the same time with "Catholic Girls"; the guitar riff in Balance & Composure's "Reflection"; the point where the Wonder Years' Dan "Soupy" Campbell jumps to a higher octave in the second chorus of both "There, There" and "The Devil In My Bloodstream"; the whistling solo in The 1975's "Settle Down"; the first time I heard the segue between Disclosure's "Intro" and "When A Fire Starts To Burn"; Owel preempting the Knapsack reunion at 0:24 in"Death in the Snow"; when My Bloody Valentine's website stopped showing a 403 error; everything that happens after 1:47 in The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die's "Picture of a Tree That Doesn't Look Okay"; the fact that "Dream House" is the exact amount of time it takes me to run 1.25 miles.
Musical Lowlights: Every time I got a PR email with the words "brand new" in the subject heading and it had absolutely nothing to do with the next Brand New album.