One infallible truth remains at the close of 2013’s music festival season: Geography’s a bitch. Events like South by Southwest or CMJ Music Marathon, which started last week in New York City and wrapped on Saturday, drive this point home at 80 miles per hour, as rushing to every set you want to see results in some maniacal game of venue hopscotch into the wee hours of the morning on a Wednesday. It’s tough and gets better with practice, but at the end of the day, a successful CMJ experience is one where you were able to discover new favorite bands while revisiting your favorites, where you walk away with an iPhone full of notes to yourself, lyrics you found inspiring, or a new act from Australia you’ll keep tabs on until they roll through the US again. These are a few of our favorite things from CMJ 2013, and they were well worth lapping between Brooklyn and lower Manhattan over the course of the past few long, loud days. More
