2013 Year-end Round-up

My Top-Scrobbled Albums released in 2013. 

I’ve said it before, but I’ll reiterate. It’s about this time of year, when I read various Top Album lists, and realize that I have overlooked tons of good albums, and I have a lot of listening to catch up on.

In light of that, I don't propose this as a Best-of list, but rather, a suggested listening list of Albums released in 2013, in case you have overlooked them.

If you haven’t heard these, they are all worth checking out.

Rank	Artist	Album	Scrobbles
	[Last.fm Link]	[Spotify Link]	[Last.fm Link]
1	San Cisco	San Cisco	300
2	Youngblood Hawke	Wake Up	268
3	Foxygen	We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic	255
4	Iron & Wine	Ghost On Ghost	239
5	Youth Lagoon	Wondrous Bughouse	211
6	Arcade Fire	Reflektor	192
7	Palace Fiction	Palace Fiction	165
8	CHVRCHES	The Bones of What You Believe (Special Edition)	144
9	Washed Out	Paracosm	139
10	Radical Face	The Family Tree: The Branches	133
11	Stornoway	Tales from Terra Firma	121
12	Imagine Dragons	Night Visions	114
13	Divine Fits	A Thing Called Divine Fits	113
14	Cults	Static	100
15	Phoenix	Bankrupt!	97
16	The Besnard Lakes	Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO	94
17	Guards	In Guards We Trust	89
18	Tegan and Sara	Heartthrob	84
19	The Strokes	Comedown Machine	54
20	Surfer Blood	Pythons	53
21	Delorean	Apar	48
22	Local Natives	Hummingbird	47
23	Fitz and the Tantrums	More Than Just A Dream	43
24	Yeah Yeah Yeahs	Mosquito	43
25	Empire of the Sun	Ice On The Dune	36

The shear amount of listening, devotion, and work for me to prepare a real Top Albums list (that I would actually feel content with) is far too daunting of a task… Even for blog of this caliber! It’s a task that I would never to able to complete, so I have to settle with a mere list of suggestions.

Album-art Cloud of my Top-Scrobbled Albums during 2013. 

[There is no release-year restriction here, so it includes albums released in any year.]

Washed Out - Paracosm

Washed Out - Paracosm

You know that feeling when you listen to an album, and it seems so good and familiar that you question whether it is really a new album at all, or if you have just mistaken a past classic? Like you are hearing covers of songs you’ve known for a while, that you just can’t quite put your finger on?

Well that is how I feel about Washed Out's new album Paracosm. It seems so familiar and right-on-point, but refreshing at the same time. It’s quite enjoyable. The album has a great feeling to it: almost a state of being. The lyrics (which are pretty much indecipherable), are apparently not that important.  It’s just the ongoing vibe, which is fantastic. I love the album art too.

I think this the best release that Washed Out has had since his first official release, Life of Leisure, which is a fantastic, but short, album.

Life of Leisure

You probably will recognize "Feel it All Around"  from the opening sequence from Portlandia.

Also, if you like those albums, don't overlook his 2nd album, Within and Without, which I apparently have forgotten about for about 2 years!  It's overtly sexually charged album-art, gives new meaning to the title. 

Within and Without

Sleigh Bells - Bitter Rivals

Several years ago when Sleigh Bells released their 1^st album Treats, it was, well… a welcome treat. It was fun, interesting, very novel, and therefore made for a well-received and highly buzzworthy release.  As time has passed and they have released 2 more albums, they have remained true to their novel sound, but unfortunately they have lost something…. And just gotten more annoying.

I would say that the novelty has simply worn off, but I still like the 1^st album (maybe not as much as when it was fresh, but I still really like it), so I guess the new albums have just gotten progressively crappier. I think they have just been trying too hard to crank out albums in an effort to remain relevant and not fade into obscurity. Unfortunately that has backfired.

Reign of Terror, their sophomore release, is pretty good. Enjoyable. Some good tracks that flow well. And…Not crazy noisy and annoying…

…which is more that I can say for the newest album, Biter Rivals, which is very busy and quite annoying. I fucking HATE the opening title-track. Total trash.  One second thought (and 2nd listen) this whole album is TRASH! I even hate the album-art! (and I really like the album-art from the 1^st two…). What happened here?!

In Summary

I Love:

Treats

I Like:

Reign of Terror

I Hate:

Bitter Rivals

Deltron 3030 - Event II

Deltron 3030 - Event II

13 years later, Deltron churns outs their 2nd album, Event II. Another enjoyable  hip-hop album brought to us by Dan the Automator and Del the Funky Homosapien, who prophesize about the post-apocalyptic, dystopian future which we are propelling our society into at full force. It is another cohesive and interesting concept album. The album is intended to be satirical look into an elaborately thought-out future, devastated by the repercussions of current status-quo. As always, it makes for a great vocabulary lesson.

The album is full of funny and sometimes corny lyrics, but occasionally ventures into the purely silly category. This is assisted by a few comedian cameos which are immediately recognizable from their distinct voices: Andy Samberg and David Cross.

To fill out the star-studded roster, the following are featured on a few tracks,

Zack De La Rocha (lead singer of Rage Against the Machine)

Damon Albarn  (of Blur and Gorillaz)

I've been a fan of Deltron since my sophmore year in college, when a friend of mine recommended Deltron’s original Album, Deltron 3030. It has been my almost exclusive venture into hip-hop and Deltron has always done a fair job of making it an enjoyable one.

Give this album a few listens, and you'll probably find yourself in nostalgia mode, cranking out Deltron's original epic classics.

Reflektor Guerrilla Marketing

While walking near Seattle Center yesterday, I noticed a faded but familiar symbol on the sidewalk.

I immediately thought this must be some part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for Arcade Fire's recently released album Reflektor. Turns out I was right. There apparently was a guerrilla marketing campaign in cities all over the world, teasing the new album art (and title), leading up to its release.

Some people were not too pleased about their property being "vandalized". Win Butler actually wrote an apology to them, saying that a miscommunication lead to some of the symbols being made with spraypaint instead of chalk that was supposed to wash off.

More examples of the symbols can be found on the Reflektor Instagram page.

Macklemore: Good-Samaritan or Sell-Out?

Seattle’s own multi-platinum superstar (albeit an independent one), Macklemore is currently on the cover to both of Seattle’s alternative weekly newspapers, and I find it hilarious that he is concurrently on both covers for such contradictory reasons.

Opportunist or Philanthropist?

The Stranger has an article about Macklemore helping a charity: Joining forces with Pearl Jam to [have their fans] compete to raise the most money for a youth homeless shelter, (which is set to close due to lost funding).

While simultaneously in the newspaper-dispenser literally touching it…

Seattle Weekly is running a cover-story about Macklemore selling-out: For using his song  “Wing$”, from his hit record The Heist, in a NBA commercial.

What is worse than him using “Wing$” in an NBA commercial, is the NBA choosing that song. It’s a very bizarre choice, given the song is about consumers being duped by marketing and gaining false hope that sneakers alone can buy an image and success; An image that the NBA clearly had a hand in perpetuating. But clearly no one cares about the meaning, as they edited the song by taking out all the anti-consumerism lyrics, adapting into a pro-NBA anthem.

Now there is no doubt that Macklemore sold-out here by whoring-out this song, but to many people he “sold-out” long ago anyway when he actually made money off his art and became famous, instead of fading into obscurity. But considering some of his “sell-out” power will be used to help the homeless, I guess it kind of evens out.

Anyway, I bring you back to the point of this article: His face is currently on the front of BOTH newspapers. 

any press is good press...

Oh, and he puts on a really great show too. For some coverage of his Sasquatch 2013 set, see my Sasquatch post.

'Track to the Future' Widget

I am pleased to announce the newest addition to my line of Last.fm widgets:  a new music "self-discovery" tool that I have been thinking about (and working on) for a while. As I mentioned in my post 100,000 Last.fm Scrobbles!, I have wanted to do more with my cache of Last.fm data. 

It is a widget that displays an album art visualization for my Top Albums from a historical week, N-years-ago-today. It shows what I was listening to, a certain number of years ago (1 year, 2 years, etc). 

I'm calling it "Track to the Future" as it allows me to refer back to what I listened to in this week in the past 7 years, and I often find myself re-Scrobbling the track in the present week! Get it?

Click to go to the widget's dedicated page.

This widget is again made using a mashup of Yahoo Pipes and my Last.fm data. It links to Spotify to simplify sharing, (just click the Album Art).  And since the Last.fm API uses MusicBrainz' (“The Open Music Encyclopedia”) Identifiers (MBIDs) as its unique identifiers, I’d say it makes for quite a nifty little mashup!

I have previously completed 2 of my ideas within this family of tools: a widget to visualize my Top Albums of the Week, and one to show my albums in Heavy Rotation within the last month (see the sidebar).

You may realize that all of these tools are built to display my own listening data. That is because I actually use these tools as memory-hooks to remind myself of past listening, as a way to visualize my Scrobbling history, as simple music “self-discovery” tools, and a place to direct others who may be interested. However, all of these widgets can be easily copied and altered to work any Last.fm user (provided you have some Last.fm data), so if you are interested in them, let me know, and I’ll start working on making them public.

100,000 Last.fm Scrobbles!

I have reached a music-listening  milestone in my life. I have scrobbled 100,000 tracks on Last.fm. It is an extremely pointless milestone, but a milestone nonetheless! This event occurred on October 9^th 2013.

What does that mean?  It means that I have listened to 100,000 tracks on a computer (or smartphone) capable of logging and reporting those listens to the Last.fm service. Logging a track in this way is known as “Scrobbling”.

Of course that means that I have listened to much more music than that, when you include non-scrobble-able media: radio, vinyl, iPod (iPods are supposed to Scrobble, but I have never gotten it to work), and other sources.

So even though this milestone doesn’t actually mean anything, it is interesting. I have always been interested in the Last.fm database of my listening history. It just silently scrobbles tracks; collecting data about my music listening history. This data has the potential to be used in a number of cool ways.

I have patiently waited for others to write useful apps, widgets, etc so I can reap the benefits of having accumulated so much data. About a year ago I got tired of waiting for others to write some of the specific code that I so desperately wanted, so I did it myself. I combined the powers of Yahoo Pipes and the Last.fm API to create a widget that displays the album art of my Top Albums of the week. [ Click the link to check it out!]

It is dynamically updated based on my real-time scrobbles, so that whenever you like, you can see what albums have had my attention in the last week. Pretty nifty, huh!? Since I have really no coding background, I’m quite proud of that feat.There is SO much more that can be done with this data, I just need to figure out how to do it, because I have some cool ideas for apps, widget, visualizations, etc.

Some Stats about my 100,000 Scrobbles

Start Date:                                  December 10^th 2006  (I was in college in those days)

Date of 100,000^th Scrobble:          October 9^th 2013

Length of Time Scrobbling:           Almost 7 years of music listening data!

Average Tracks per day:               40

Artists in my library:                     1,953


Milestone Tracks: Think of this list as a grab-sample for the respective timeperiod. An interesting look into a music listening history.

1st track:	Ted Leo and the Pharmacists	-	Little Dawn	16-Dec-06
1000th track:	The Flaming Lips	-	Yeah Yeah Yeah Song	13-Jan-07
2000th track:	The Knife	-	Still Light	4-Feb-07
3000th track:	Andrew Bird	-	Scythian Empire	22-Feb-07
4000th track:	Patrick Wolf	-	Accident & Emergency	21-Mar-07
5000th track:	Snow Patrol	-	Chasing Cars	18-Apr-07
6000th track:	Broken Social Scene	-	Stars and Sons	18-May-07
7000th track:	Ted Leo and the Pharmacists	-	Me and Mia	30-Jun-07
8000th track:	Pink Floyd	-	When You're In	2-Aug-07
9000th track:	of Montreal	-	Sink The Seine	30-Sep-07
10000th track:	Band of Horses	-	Cigarettes, Wedding Bands	20-Oct-07
11000th track:	Andrew Bird	-	Imitosis	7-Nov-07
12000th track:	TV on the Radio	-	Province	28-Nov-07
13000th track:	The New Pornographers	-	These Are the Fables	20-Dec-07
14000th track:	Elton John	-	Tiny Dancer	17-Jan-08
15000th track:	Band of Horses	-	Window Blues	6-Feb-08
16000th track:	Pink Floyd	-	Shine on You Crazy Diamond VI-IX	5-Mar-08
17000th track:	Murder by Death	-	Shiola	21-Mar-08
18000th track:	Hot Chip	-	(Just Like We) Breakdown	9-Apr-08
19000th track:	Modest Mouse	-	Invisible	1-May-08
20000th track:	LCD Soundsystem	-	All My Friends	23-May-08
21000th track:	Modest Mouse	-	Intro	20-Jun-08
22000th track:	Radiohead	-	2 2 = 5	7-Jul-08
23000th track:	The Offspring	-	Walla Walla	11-Oct-08
24000th track:	Stevie Wonder	-	Isn't She Lovely	20-Nov-08
25000th track:	Secret Machines	-	First Wave Intact	8-Dec-08
26000th track:	Neutral Milk Hotel	-	Oh Comely	14-Jan-09
27000th track:	Belle and Sebastian	-	tigermilk - 01 the state i am	8-Feb-09
28000th track:	The Bird and the Bee	-	Ray Gun	6-Mar-09
29000th track:	The Fiery Furnaces	-	Tropical-Iceland	4-May-09
30000th track:	Swan Lake	-	In the Name of Love	17-Jun-09
31000th track:	Fleet Foxes	-	English House	1-Jul-09
32000th track:	Pinback	-	Offline P.K.	15-Jul-09
33000th track:	Beach House	-	Heart and Lungs	3-Aug-09
34000th track:	Janelle Monáe	-	Many Moons	17-Aug-09
35000th track:	Cake	-	When You Sleep	31-Aug-09
36000th track:	Wolf Parade	-	We Built Another World	15-Sep-09
37000th track:	Phoenix	-	Lisztomania	1-Oct-09
38000th track:	Harlem Shakes	-	TFO	16-Oct-09
39000th track:	The Black Keys	-	Just Got To Be	30-Oct-09
40000th track:	Deftones	-	Digital Bath	20-Nov-09
41000th track:	Led Zeppelin	-	The Battle of Evermore	15-Dec-09
42000th track:	Major Lazer	-	When You Hear The Bassline feat. Ms. Thing	3-Jan-10
43000th track:	Toy Soldiers	-	When I Tripped Into You	16-Jan-10
44000th track:	She & Him	-	Take It Back	31-Jan-10
45000th track:	Kid Cudi	-	Enter Galactic (Love Connection Part 1)	16-Feb-10
46000th track:	Radiohead	-	Optimistic	29-Mar-10
47000th track:	Those Darlins	-	222	16-Apr-10
48000th track:	Coldplay	-	Lost!	10-May-10
49000th track:	The Rosebuds	-	Drunkards Worst Nightmare	1-Jun-10
50000th track:	of Montreal	-	Suffer For Fashion	23-Jun-10
51000th track:	La Roux	-	In for the Kill	15-Jul-10
52000th track:	Arcade Fire	-	Half Light II (No Celebration)	1-Aug-10
53000th track:	Pinback	-	Prog	26-Aug-10
54000th track:	Passion Pit	-	Sleepyhead	4-Oct-10
55000th track:	Mumford & Sons	-	I Gave You All	27-Oct-10
56000th track:	Panda Bear	-	Bros	15-Nov-10
57000th track:	Bob Dylan	-	Love Minus Zero/No Limit	24-Dec-10
58000th track:	Best Coast	-	The End	28-Jan-11
59000th track:	The White Stripes	-	I Fought Piranhas	16-Feb-11
60000th track:	Caribou	-	Niobe	10-Mar-11
61000th track:	The Dresden Dolls	-	Coin-Operated Boy	30-Mar-11
62000th track:	Plants and Animals	-	Good Friend	23-Apr-11
63000th track:	Elf Power	-	An Old Familiar Scene	8-Jun-11
64000th track:	The Besnard Lakes	-	Glass Printer	5-Jul-11
65000th track:	Tegan and Sara	-	Take Me Anywhere	18-Aug-11
66000th track:	Deer Tick	-	Art Isn't Real (City of Sin)	27-Sep-11
67000th track:	The Antlers	-	Rolled Together	27-Oct-11
68000th track:	Girls	-	Substance	11-Nov-11
69000th track:	Foo Fighters	-	Up In Arms	6-Dec-11
70000th track:	The War on Drugs	-	Your Love Is Calling My Name	12-Jan-12
71000th track:	Fang Island	-	Life Coach	27-Jan-12
72000th track:	Cults	-	Never Saw The Point	8-Feb-12
73000th track:	Counting Crows	-	A Long December	27-Feb-12
74000th track:	Tears for Fears	-	Woman In Chains	8-Mar-12
75000th track:	The Head and the Heart	-	Lost In My Mind	4-Apr-12
76000th track:	Bat for Lashes	-	Daniel	19-Apr-12
77000th track:	Cass McCombs	-	The Living Word	2-May-12
78000th track:	Band of Horses	-	Blue Beard	16-May-12
79000th track:	Freelance Whales	-	We Could Be Friends	1-Jun-12
80000th track:	Freelance Whales	-	Kilojoules	20-Jun-12
81000th track:	Local Natives	-	Sun Hands	4-Jul-12
82000th track:	The Civil Wars	-	Forget Me Not	25-Jul-12
83000th track:	Ben Folds Five	-	Smoke	14-Aug-12
84000th track:	Dr. Dog	-	From	13-Sep-12
85000th track:	Richard Harvey	-	001a - A2	28-Sep-12
86000th track:	Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins	-	Handle With Care	21-Oct-12
87000th track:	The Beatles	-	Paperback Writer	7-Nov-12
88000th track:	The Rosebuds	-	Oh It's Christmas	11-Dec-12
89000th track:	Plants and Animals	-	à l'orée des bois	6-Jan-13
90000th track:	Freelance Whales	-	Winter Seeds	5-Feb-13
91000th track:	Gorillaz	-	El Mañana	7-Mar-13
92000th track:	Mac DeMarco	-	Cooking Up Something Good	5-Apr-13
93000th track:	Passion Pit	-	Two Veils To Hide My Face	30-Apr-13
94000th track:	Father John Misty	-	Well, You Can Do It Without Me	16-May-13
95000th track:	Fang Island	-	Dreams Of Dreams	6-Jun-13
96000th track:	Miles Kane	-	Don't Forget Who You Are	24-Jun-13
97000th track:	Ladytron	-	Flicking Your Switch	16-Jul-13
98000th track:	Macklemore & Ryan Lewis	-	Cowboy Boots	10-Aug-13
99000th track:	Pink Floyd	-	Eclipse - 2011 - Remaster	20-Aug-13
100000th track:	The War on Drugs	-	The Animator	9-Oct-13
101000th track:	Arcade Fire	-	Reflektor	30-Oct-13

As of this Milestone here are my charts.

Top Artists

Rank	Artist	Scrobbles
1	of Montreal	1753
2	Andrew Bird	1697
3	Band of Horses	1575
4	The Beatles	1471
5	M83	1412
6	Fleet Foxes	1288
7	TV on the Radio	1279
8	Radiohead	1268
9	Yeasayer	1226
10	Arcade Fire	1135
11	Beach House	1085
12	Mew	1069
13	The Rosebuds	1064
14	Pink Floyd	1029
15	Hot Chip	956

Top Albums

Rank	Album	Scrobbles
1	M83 – Hurry Up, We're Dreaming	786
2	Harlem Shakes – Technicolor Health	670
3	TV on the Radio – Dear Science	623
4	Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles	602
5	Yeasayer – ODD BLOOD	601
6	The Knife – Silent Shout	581
7	Band of Horses – Everything All the Time	553
8	Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues	544
9	Deer Tick – War Elephant	534
10	Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes	482
11	The Head and the Heart – The Head and The Heart	476
12	Andrew Bird – The Mysterious Production of Eggs	472
13	Passion Pit – Manners	471
14	Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha	461
15	St. Vincent – Actor	455

Top Tracks

Rank	Track	Scrobbles
1	Band of Horses – The Funeral	82
2	Harlem Shakes – Niagara Falls	77
3	The Knife – Na Na Na	76
4	Yeasayer – Ambling Alp	74
5	Harlem Shakes – Sunlight	74
6	Harlem Shakes – Strictly Game	72
7	Harlem Shakes – Unhurried Hearts (Passaic Pastoral)	72
8	Mew – Special	70
9	Harlem Shakes – TFO	70
10	Yeasayer – I Remember	70
11	Yeasayer – Madder Red	70
12	The Knife – Silent Shout	69
13	Harlem Shakes – Nothing But Change, Part II	69
14	Yeasayer – The Children	68