Top 20 Albums of 2013

Another year and it’s time for another snapshot of my music favorites. Lists seem such an evil to me at times – they feed into the hype cycles and can direct and redirect attention in a way that may be harmful to smaller artists. Awards are distributed in some bizarre frenzy of groupthink (look at the film industry), and who is to say that we shouldn’t frame our reference window seasonally, or monthly, or decennialy? But in the same breath, I think documenting personal preferences can be valuable to mark growth, guide future investigations, and reflect on what has been meaningful in my world.

There are never “final” lists or finalized versions of anything in life. We can spend hours in the studio perfecting music or years thinking that a marriage will finally work once it gets over a certain hump. Like photographs, life is a series of snapshots or moments. Making a list is like taking a polaroid picture of a specific year of music and what it meant to me as it was ending.

After that far too off-topic ramble, it’s time for the list where everything’s made up and the rankings don’t matter.

1	The Appleseed Cast	Illumination Ritual	Graveface Records
2	Wooden Wand	Blood Oaths of the New Blues	Fire Records
3	My Bloody Valentine	M B V	self
4	Tim Hecker	Virgins	Kranky
5	Lumerians	The High Frontier	Partisan Records
6	Disappears	Era	Kranky
7	Kurt Vile	Wakin On A Pretty Daze	Matador Records
8	Wooden Wand and the World War IV	Wooden Wand and the World War IV	Three Lobed Recordings
9	The National	Trouble Will Find Me	4AD
10	Lucrecia Dalt	Syzygy	Human Ear Music
11	Jenks Miller	Spirit Signal	Northern-Spy Records
12	Esmerine	Dalmak	Constellation
13	Julianna Barwick	Nepenthe	Dead Oceans
14	Aidan Baker	Already Drowning	Gizeh Records
15	Mountains	Centralia	Thrill Jockey
16	Thee Oh Sees	Floating Coffin	Castle Face Records
17	Chelsea Light Moving	Chelsea Light Moving	Matador Records
18	Youth Lagoon	Wondrous Bughouse	Fat Possum Records
19	Gnod	Chaudelande	Rocket Recordings
20	Gabriel Saloman	Soldier’s Requiem	Miasmah Recordings

What a wonderful year of music it was. See you in the new year,

Adam

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July 2013

Hello all,

ghost trees is my often dormant music-related blog where I gush about my recent music obsessions, concerts attended, and dump a whole lot of “who cares” onto the world. I had considered completely abandoning it (several times), but out of the blue, I recently got a strangely genuine comment of appreciation. So I decided that I might as well continue slinging words about stuff people don’t care about into the ether.

Xi Hammer at SubMission in San Francisco June 8, 2013

What have I been up to? Well I actually have tested the waters of “being a musician” with some friends. We started Xi Hammer, a noisy, psychedelic, slowmo, heavy rock band and played a couple of shows this past spring. Many pieces of the loose collective have moved away from the Bay Area (myself included), so I’m not sure exactly what will happen, but we did spend some time in the studio. We intended to put out some music. Hopefully that’ll happen soon. Of course I’ll promote myself all over my blog, naturally, when that happens.

I also did some traveling, went to some shows, listened to some great music. My favorites from this year, surprisingly aren’t super obscure. I really like the new Appleseed Cast, The National, Wooden Wand, and Aidan Baker albums, and I was completely bowled over by Thurston Moore’s “cosmic glam-distorto psych” band, Chelsea Light Moving’s performance in Seattle in March.

Too much text is always bad news. So I’ll leave you virtual friends with a photo of the traditional/modern/world/improv group Agadetah, that I saw in June. Cool to see these instruments and it was a beautiful setting in Tzfat.