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 Retribution Gospel Choir: "Seven"
02 Dan Friel: "Valedictorian"
03 Blank Realm: "Falling Down the Stairs"
04 Glenn Jones: "Bergen County Farewell"
05 Scott & Charlene's Wedding: "1993"
06 Mazes: "Bodies"
07 The Mantles: "Reason's Run"
08 William Tyler: "Cadillac Desert"
09 Generationals: "Spinoza"
10 Deerhunter: "Back to the Middle"
Favorite Albums of 2013:
01 Wolf Eyes: No Answer : Lower Floors
02 Mike Shiflet: The Choir, the Army
03 Rashad Becker: Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I
04 Bonnie "Prince" Billy: Bonnie "Prince" Billy
05 Hair Police: Mercurial Rites
06 Peter Kolovos: Black Colors
07 Mazes: Ores & Minerals
08 Graham Lambkin / Jason Lescalleet: Photographs
09 Okkyung Lee: Ghil
10 Lee Noble: Ruiner
Most Played Song of 2013: Dan Friel, "Valedictorian". I've actually been playing this one for a year and a half; it came out on a 12" in late summer 2012 before appearing on Friel's excellent 2013 LP Total Folklore. 18 months worth of repeats hasn't dulled its earworm-ing charm—somehow its broken-music-box jingle still sounds fiery and frantic every time it fills my earbuds. It helps that the nursery-rhyme melody dovetails nicely with the incessant songs that bleep from my son's toys, a kiddie canon that "Valedictorian" should someday belong to. Maybe I can at least get Friel to play it at my son's graduation in 2031.
An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: DeStijl's massive digital reissue of the entire No-Neck Blues Band discography is quite a public service, allowing fanatics like myself to fill in holes created by otherwise long-gone limited releases. I dug into quite a few of them this year, but was most transfixed by The Large Taquat, two side-long pieces recorded at the band's first NYC studio in 1996, and Rye Antenna, a 2004 tour CD-R that captures the ramshackle spirit of their late, legendary bunker in Harlem called the Hint House.
Musical Highlights: After over two decades years of listening to and writing about Richard Youngs, I finally got to meet him and watch him perform—twice!—on his first official tour in the U.S. The first show, at the annually-amazing Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, NC, took place in the huge Memorial Auditorium, where Youngs' a capella songs echoed with scary power (at one point he stood so still and quiet for so long everyone seemed to wonder if he was done, then he burst back into singing, like a villain jumping onscreen in a horror movie). The second gig, at the Black Cat in D.C., was much smaller in scale and more personal in tone, with Youngs wandering around the room, sitting in the middle of the floor, and creating a completely different vibe that was just as enthralling. Expectations for this tour were off the charts, but Youngs easily exceeded them.
Musical Lowlights: Why dwell?