Austin B. Harvey presents: The Liquid Diet writesCHIRP Radio Best of 2012 (Austin Bainard Harvey)

Throughout December, CHIRP Radio presents its members’ top albums of 2012. Our next list is from DJ Austin Bainard Harvey.

1. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! (Constellation)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   2012's best album came from an unlikely source. A decade removed from the lukewarm-ly receivedYanqui U.X.O., GY!BE storm back with an album full of risk and reward. How do they do it? By suffixing two lengthy, in-character suites that hit all the right emotional and musical tones with two drone pieces that will actually get you listening to drone music. The lengthy tracks are the real highlights, with the band doing what no other band these days is really able to do: create a 20-minute piece of music that both interests and challenges the listener the entire way through. This album will move you, consistently and joyously.
2. Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE (Def Jam)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   All headlines and video-game-playing SNL-appearances aside, Frank Ocean's music is able to speak for itself. This in itself is quite the achievement, but channel ORANGE is able to go further. Showcasing the year's best ballad ("Thinkin Bout You"), the year's best R&B epic ("Pyramids"), and numerous insightful ruminations on southern California lifestyle excess, Frank Ocean proved himself to be the most important figure in pop music in 2012. The hype, in this case, is deserved
3. Mazes - Mazes Blazes (Parasol)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   Pair the unique brand of Chicago chamber-twee cuteness exemplified by The 1900s, Canasta, and Scotland Yard Gospel Choir with the breakneck lunacy of Guided By Voices or The Olivia Tremor Control's best work, and you get an idea of what was the Windy City's best record of 2012. Sharing members with The 1900s, this wacky selection of adorable tunes would fit awkwardly in a Glasgow coffeeshop, or perfectly in a Dunedin pub. At its heart Blazes is a sweet selection of indie-pop glory, with enough changes in attitude and tempo to keep the listener off-balance.
4. Tiger High - Catacombs After Party (Trashy Creatures)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   The second album of the year from these Memphis debutants is a shocking leap forward. While guitar feedback and distorted vocals might tell you this is going to be another indie-garage record, you pay another listen to pop masterpieces like "So Long" or the marvelous "Lightspeed", a song whose Brit-influenced chord progression could have been from an outtake to Different Class. Later in the album, phasers and organs take you to the places that your parents wish they could have gone in their formidable years. If Tiger High saved this goodness for album number 2, one can only imagine where they can go from here.
5. Royal Headache - Royal Headache (What's Your Rupture?)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   Very rarely has punk ever tried to sell its vocalists as anything rivaling legitimate, decent singers. Enter Royal Headache's Shogun, who brings the passion of King Khan and pipes that sniff Otis Redding's greatness (though don't really get close, rest assured). Still, the Australian singer sells it, and for the most part, you're willing to buy. The licks and songs are all there, too. The band's 2011 self-titled debut, reissued in the States this year, brings melody and sweat in equal proportions. Paul Thompson's Pitchfork review name checks the Faces and 60's soul, and to say they mix the two is apt.
6. The Men - Open Your Heart (Sacred Bones)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   It's a little weird seeing one of your favorite bands of the year play their first (semi-legal) show in Chicago after releasing a monster record in a loft in a run-down industrial neighborhood. Still, The Men did it and did it well. The country and classic rock influences evident on their second album don't dull the hardcore blasts of tracks light "Animal" or "Cube". But what makes the album great are the moments where they branch out to kraut-y epics ("Oscillation") or even outlaw country ("Candy"). It's a celebratory record, rejoicing in The Men's success, and their confidence to do whatever the heck they want to, and still have that initial level of success and impact.
7. DIIV - Oshin (Captured Tracks)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   Shoegaze isn't really one of those subgenres of indie-rock that has really begged for – or lends itself to – much experimentation or progression. Loveless pretty much took care of all of that, and no one's really looked to do much more besides lean on synthy-dream pop for the last decade. DIIV didn't get the memo. Combining a knack for melody with an excitability one normally sees in punk groups (they toured with Japandroids, for instance), DIIV prove that you don't necessarily need to make your lyrics decipherable to get the point across. Echo-drenched and sometimes a bit spacey, Oshin succeeds on the strength of its grooves, energy, surprisingly catchy melodies.
8. Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light (Double Six)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   The Oasis album that should have been the bloated Be Here Now, Sweet Heart Sweet Light is sentimental, positive, reassuring, and self-assured. Jason Pierce brings in songwriting help from places as disparate as Dr. John and his 11-year-old daughter, Poppy Spaceman, to create a record that flies in the face of bleaker, sparer points of indie rock. For those with a penchant for the best the sometimes-overblown 90's had to offer, this neo-Britpop masterpiece is bombastic, symphonic, and massive, and it works.
9. Swans - The Seer (Young God)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   Is suspense or release more intimidating? Michael Gira and company seem more content to use the promise of danger, as opposed to the act itself, as a means of terrifying the listener. Not an easy listen by any stretch, Swans' massive two-hour opus hems, haws, whines, screams, and contorts itself in ways that aren't necessarily meant to bring about any tidy conclusion or catharsis. WIll it make you think? Absolutely. Will it put you at ease? Absolutely not. Post-punk gives way to No Wave, post-rock, and experimentation, sometimes within the same track. All of it is intense, and all of it will make your mother want you to turn it off. It's not reassuring, nor is it supposed to be. But within that thought, there's a certain pleasure. That's how Swans succeed on The Seer.
10. Mount Eerie - Ocean Roar (P.W. Elverum & Sun)
    BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
    Ocean Roar was the second Mount Eerie album of 2012; whereas May's Clear Moon had short acoustic odes to nature and home, August's Ocean Roar has intense, drone-y lamentations that last for as long as ten minutes. As one whose favorite Microphones/Mount Eerie moments are the louder ones, this was the album that struck a chord with me this year. Phil Elverum channels the noisy existential confusion of his "black metal" epic Wind's Poem to far better effect here, marrying the songwriting strengths of his best Microphones work with intensity and turmoil for a heavy music album that doesn't abandon its folk roots.

Honorable Mentions

• Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph) Mathcore, hardcore, metalcore, it's all working for the Salem, MA band's eighth album. The year's best metal record. .
  
  VERMA - EXU (self-released) Psych-kraut from Chicago that's at its best when they're at their loudest. This LP brings together all their best elements and amplifies them.
  
  Evans The Death - Evans The Death (Slumberland) Londoner post-punk that doesn't leave its pop tendencies at the door. Bonus points for Katherine Whitaker's excellent lilting vocals. .
  
  Dirty Ghosts - Metal Moon (Last Gang) Aesop Rock provides the beats for this San Francisco band. Dancefloor strutter with melodic tendencies. ESG for the 21st Century.
  
  Royal Thunder - CVI (Relapse) Southern metal-meets-Southern rock progenitors return with another blistering set of killer tunes fronted by Miny Parsonz' devastating mezzo. .
  
  Crystal Syphon - Family Evil (Roaratorio) Long-lost-and-found California psych from the 60's that's a little a more stoned than The 13th Floor Elevators, but just as freaked out by, well, darn near everything. .
  
  Japandroids - Celebration Rock (Polyvinyl) Celebration. Rock. It does exactly what it says on the tin. .
  
  John Talabot - ƒIN (Permanent Vacation) Barcelonan beatmaker Talabot puts a dark edge on Balearic pop, and the result is the year's best dance album. .
  
  Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music (Williams Street) The Atlanta hip-hop veteran releases his best album to date thanks to spectacular production from El-P and a politicized bent that takes prisoners and annihilates the rest.
  
  Outer Minds - Outer Minds (Southpaw) The Chicago quintet's first album of the year marries piercing organ, jangly 12-string, and psychedelic harmonies to poppy perfection.
• REISSUE OF THE YEAR
  Disco Inferno - The 5 EPs (One Little Indian) Sound collage is something that's been happening with music since the days of Stockhausen and Spike Jones. Very rarely had it been used as a cooperative force in rock songwriting, and don't say that The Beatles count. This Essex trio brought sampling, found sound, and amazing songwriting chops together in harmony for a hugely influential and artistically successful (if not economically so) career. Everyone from The Avalanches to No Age, Battles to MGMT, can bear the mark of these pop geniuses on their work. Plenty to digest and rejoice about in this long-overdue double-vinyl reissue.