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 Daft Punk: "Get Lucky" [ft. Pharrell]
02 RVIVR: Spider Song
03 Haim: "Don't Save Me"
04 Francis and the Lights: "Betting On Us"
05 Diarrhea Planet: "Babyhead"
06 The Men: "Half Angel Half Light"
07 Justin Timberlake: "Mirrors"
08 Kvelertak: "Kvelertak"
09 Queens of the Stone Age: "My God Is the Sun"
10 Butter the Children: "Spit It Out"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 RVIVR: The Beauty Between
02 Haim: Days Are Gone
03 Carcass: Surgical Steel
04 Diarrhea Planet: I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
05 Queens of the Stone Age: …Like Clockwork
06 Suffocation: Pinnacle of Bedlam
07 Black Sabbath: 13
08 Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
09 The Men: New Moon
10 Gorguts: Colored Sands
Your Most Played Song of 2013: RVIVR, "Spider Song". I stumbled across this video on the All Songs Considered blog back in January and quickly slid down the slope into superfandom. I saw three magical RVIVR shows this year; before and between them, this is the song I kept coming back to. I'm a sucker for all the classic early-90s pop-punk moves on display here—the palm-muted riffing, the machine-gun snare build-ups, that monster pick scrape at the 1:39 mark—but what really gets me is the fire in Erica Freas's voice, and the way she uses it to illuminate the fragility of friendship.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: My friend Nick Podgurski—who happens to be a phenomenal drummer, vocalist, keyboardist, composer, etc.—is my prime obscure-music connection. He's constantly digging up long-forgotten prog, avant-garde black metal and mindblowing deep cuts by famous bands you thought you knew and assembling them into playlists for friends. Nick and I were at a party together a while back and I mentioned my recent obsession with the band America. He insisted I check out "Holy River", by the little-known Fort Worth, Texas outfit Space Opera, and I was instantly smitten. It turns out that Space Opera's entire debut record, a self-titled LP from 1973, is just as good. The album jumbles together most of my favorite qualities of early-’70s rock—the down-home groove of the Band, the abrasion and angularity of King Crimson, the ear-bending precision of Steely Dan and, yes, plenty of America—and somehow makes them hang together.
Musical Highlights: Hanging out in a Vermont hotel room with my wife, La'al, accidentally channel-surfing to a video of Haim live at Glastonbury and instantly looking at each other like, "Holy shit, this is good." (Which led to several months of blasting Days Are Gone whenever we drove anywhere together.) Finally recording the first full-length album by my band STATS, more than ten years after my friend Joe and I founded the project. Helping to launch the latest live incarnation of Aa, featuring longtime buds John and Mike, and new comrade Julian. Aurally gorging on death metal, whether via headphones in my cubicle and during commutes, or live at the glorious Maryland Deathfest XI or at my Greenpoint home-away-from-home, Saint Vitus. Catching multiple gigs apiece by rock supernovas Diarrhea Planet and RVIVR. Reveling in the dumbfounded bliss that is the experience of hearing Milford Graves live (also thrice). Finally seeing Black fucking Sabbath.
Musical Lowlights: Witnessing the near-unanimous critical dismissal of 13. Agonizing over Greg Ginn's decision to peg What The… as the new Black Flag album rather than the much worthier Full Serving, a no-profile simultaneous release by his other band Good for You.