My music listening was way down this year. I blame it on all the movies and starting a new job. The end result is that my best picks here probably aren't quite as strong as they were in 2008, 2009, 2010, or 2011. But still, some good stuff. As in previous years, the vast majority of this came before 2012, but this was the year I paid attention. January

Greatest Hits - Mariah Carey. This album saw me through the end of a hard winter. So much goodness. I don't know if I'll ever dive into one of her full albums... but some of these peaks are so high I may reconsider. Emotions!

Return to the Winners Circle - Curren$y. If I needed to, I could rank this solely on the strength of Moon & Stars Remix. Rare that the headliner and two guest rappers all just destroy their verses. And I love that backbeat.

The Soul Tape - Fabolous. I like Pain ("An old head told me, let nothing disturb your business / Beef is only good when you in the burger business") and In the Morning.

February

Da Chip Vol. 1 & 2 was a fun listen, but probably works best if you're already familiar with Daft Punk, right?

March

Sometimes you don't realize it, but what your life is missing is an awesome collection of Kraftwerk tunes covered with a Latin/lounge feel. Thankfully my buddy John knew what I needed to hear: El Baile Alemán from Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto. For all the campiness, there's some smart, creative arrangements here. Neon Lights and Showroom Dummies are good examples.

Fuck a Mixtape - T.I.. I don't loooove the whole album, but worthy of mention: No Competition is my JAM.

Big Bach Set. It's a great bargain. The Mass in B minor is a big draw, but besides that, the Adagio from the Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C minor, BWV 1060 really stood out. Pizzicato in stereo is so wonderful on headphones.

April

My best music month overall.

Come Shop Wit Me - Young Jeezy. I'm 9 years late, but it's album of the year for me. My faves from Jeezy's second are: Let Me Hit Dat (love those reverb guitars and the overactive bass; Fi Chief & Big Dank kill it), Take It to the Floor (pump-up/act like I'm someone I'm not song), Come Shop Wit Me (fun storytelling, and the overdriven bass line reminds me of a late '80s video game), Thug Ya (steel drums!), and Bananas (fat, dopey bass, and something about his voice in the verses here: looser, goofier, unhinged).

Way Down Low from my friend Kat Edmonson. Listen to "Hopelessly Blue". I mean, geez. Incredible voice.

Blue Afternoon. You'd figure I'd catch on to Tim Buckley sooner, having spent college obsessing over his son's music. You'd figure wrong. Listen to Happy Time and Blue Melody. He's got a wonderful back-up band. The whole gang is so loose. And look at that album cover!

And I can't forget Françoise Hardy's Soleil. I don't understand any of it, but the mood is right. My favorite track is Je fais des puzzles.

May

Bloom - Beach House. It's a lot like the previous three, which is totally fine by me. (I think only Bach and Camera Obscura beats them in my music archive for comfy, catchy, beloved predictability.) Myth is an obvious stand-out, but I think the verses on New Year are kinda genius. Same for Wild.

Shortly after that album came out, I caught Beach House on tour again. On the drive back from Athens, a friend introduced me to Bad Vibes by Shlohmo. Drippy, druggy lullabies. Places and Seriously are favorites.

June I got nothin'.

July

Loveless - My Bloody Valentine. Woah. Slept on this one but the Grantland article woke me up. I was so proud of myself when I recognized the Loomer/Optimistic resemblance.

August

A great month for radio in the car!

Kaleidoscope Dream - Miguel. Adorn has gotten crazy playtime in Atlanta. That bass is perfect for your car. And I love how the harmony is a little suppressed, so that voice and the bass do all the driving.

Trilla - Rick Ross. My friend Katie and I were driving to one of my favorite places to eat too much, if I recall correctly. I heard the opening sample from my favorite Stevie Wonder album in Here I Am and I was sold. I made her Shazam it for future reference.

To round out the group: Channel Orange - Frank Ocean. WRAS 88.5 FM played Pyramids while I was driving over to another friend named John's house and I lost it. I *had* to call in and find out what it was. You can't beat that feeling.

I didn't hear it on the radio, but I can't forget the Thief soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Probably best if you've seen the awesome movie, but it's great for working on secret projects.

September {crickets}

October I didn't bother with the whole album, but Clique from Cruel Summer is dope. Perfect beat, but the song doesn't really take flight until Jay-Z gets on the mic (that jet engine glissando helps). Kanye takes lovable insufferability to a new level.

November

Asterism/Requiem/Green/The Dorian Horizon - Toru Takemitsu. I really like it, but only recommended if you've got ears for late 20th-century orchestral music...

December It's not too late for your suggestions!

I have the hardest time finding good fiction. One working theory to explain that is that I usually don't try very hard to find good fiction. I'll own up to it. But sometimes my laziness (i.e., willingness to let trusted internet sources filter culture for me) works to perfection. This one got recommended by Austin Kleon, Maris Kreiszman, and Ben Casnocha, so I thought I'd better pick it up.

Ignore for a moment the fact that they mentioned it about a year ago and I read it this summer and I didn't write about it until now. It's a novel of baseball and college and friendship and family, and it is delightful to read at all times, from the off-hand asides...

This was a real college, an enlightened place--you could get in trouble for hating people here.

...to the self-aware observations:

Literature could turn you into an asshole; he'd learned that teaching grad-school seminars. It could teach you to treat real people the way you did characters, as instruments of your own intellectual pleasure, cadavers on which to practice your critical faculties.

And there's the realist/critical eye toward modern business life:

Management consulting terms like *industry ante* and *decision factor* were the glue of their relationship--Affenlight tried to learn as many of them as possible, and to intuit or invent the ones he hadn't learned.

Another good example, observing baseball scouts:

Smooth-featured and polite, business-casual in dress, with slender laptops in their laps and BlackBerries laid beside them on the bleachers, they looked like oversize consultants or CIA agents playing a very reserved sort of hooky.

Austin already pulled one of the best excerpts in there:

He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you.

I also loved this section on the ontology of sport:

For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition being, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not. Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed *sometimes*, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer--you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error.

And one character's thoughts on self-definition:

Don't be dour about it. Straight gay black white young old--it's not going to kill you or let you live.

This line reminded me of John Cage:

That was the idiot hopefulness of humans, always to love what was unformed.

Lastly, on men:

Men were such odd creatures. They didn't duel anymore, even fistfights had come to seem barbaric, the old casual violence all channeled through institutions now, but they still loved to uphold their ancient codes. And what they loved even more was to forgive each other.