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 Haim: "The Wire"
02 Kleenex Girl Wonder: "Migration Scripts"
03 David Bowie: "Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy)"
04 Petula Clark: "Cut Copy Me"
05 Girls' Generation: "I Got a Boy"
06 Busta Rhymes: "Thank You"
07 Miley Cyrus: "We Can't Stop"
08 Daft Punk: "Get Lucky"
09 Superchunk: "F.O.H."
10 Perfect Pussy: "I"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Kanye West: Yeezus
02 My Bloody Valentine: mbv
03 Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
04 Kelela: Cut 4 Me
05 Melt Banana: fetch
06 The Ex & Brass Unbound: Enormous Door
07 Alex Chilton: Electricity By Candlelight
08 M.I.A.: Matangi
09 Quasi: Mole City
10 Yo La Tengo: Fade
Most Played Song of 2013: That would have to be the Steinways' masterpiece of concision "(My Girlfriend Is A) Crazy Fucking Cat Lady", which does more in twelve seconds than I've done in my entire lifetime, I suspect.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: Billy Childish has made enough great-and-very-similar records that I sometimes don't listen to new ones, just so they'll be there when I need one. When I reached for one I hadn't yet heard this year, I pulled up In Blood, his 1999 album of duets with Holly Golightly. It's a particularly solid one, and the formalist in me is delighted by its formal conceit: twelve songs, each written with one chord.
Musical Highlights: Dancing to New Order and Depeche Mode videos at a new wave club called Planet Earth in the middle of the desert. Finally getting to hear the final volume of the Complete Motown Singles series. Watching Cat Power stare down "I Wanna Be Your Dog". Sara Marcus's karaoke performance of "Jesus Take the Wheel". Seeing Miss Alex White of White Mystery pogo and play guitar at the same time on a moving train. Getting a friend's playlist of amazing K-pop videos by Girls' Generation and 2NE1 and f(x) and Sistar. Working out a ukulele arrangement of "Cosmetic Plague" by Rudimentary Peni. "Whoa, the My Bloody Valentine album is done?!"
Musical Lowlights: Slinking out of a couple of exhausted, perfunctory performances by bands I used to love.