Maddie Hannes writesCHIRP Radio Best of 2012 (Maddie Hannes)

Throughout December, CHIRP Radio presents its members’ top albums of 2012. Our next list is from CHIRP's Art Director Maddie Hannes.

1. Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (Def Jam)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   About one month ago, I was out and about in Milwaukee celebrating a friend's birthday, and when we ended up back at the home of our hostess she put on Frank Ocean. Everyone, and I mean everyone, even the people I'd seen only peripherally since graduating high school, immediately launched into drunken singalong to "Thinking About You," even the falsetto chorus. There were champagne and feelings all over the place. It was nice.
2. Dirty Projectors – Swing Low Magellan (Domino)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   Along with the Fiona Apple record mentioned below and the Walkmen's Heaven, Swing Low Magellan is the first record I called my own. We finally got a working turntable this summer, so having an August birthday was perfect timing. Unfortunately, the turntable has since been in and out of the shop, but I've never stopped singing bits of this album. It's chock full of pretty melodies and crooning lyrics that tend to come to mind when I'm doing the dishes, which makes me feel like a hip Cinderella, albeit one who now randomly sneaks a cutesy "Hey baby!" into everyday conversation.
3. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (Epic)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   When I'm in one of my more potent moods, I tend to get songs from Idler Wheel stuck in my head. "Left Alone" for workday stress, "Every Single Night" for lying awake in bed thinking of all the horrible things I've done, and "Hot Knife" for Friday nights at a speakeasy.
4. David Byrne & St. Vincent – Love This Giant (4AD/Todo Mundo)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   I'm pretty lazy when it comes to searching out music; e.g., I only started getting really into St. Vincent this year. Naturally, Love This Giant was ON REPEAT when it released, partly because it's so different from anything I'd heard before, and partly because it has lines like "One of these days I'm gonna bring the hammer down / I'm working hard but my heart is wearing out," which sound especially comforting when you're stressed and happen to have recently watched "Thor."
5. Azealia Banks – 1991 EP (Interscope)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   I first heard the thumping "212" because it was on another website's best songs of 2011 list, and that was enough to keep me paying attention to Azealia Banks throughout 2012. On both 1991 and the later-released mixtape Fantasea, Banks raps with jaw-dropping aplomb over beats that sound straight out of a '90s night club. Not that I would know personally, having been four years old in 1991 and well over my clubbing phase, but then again, that's the year Azealia was born, so we all might as well just give up now. With a full album coming out in February and a collaboration with Lady Gaga on the latter's next album, there's no artist I'm more excited to watch. And if you're wondering, "But can she sing!?," search YouTube for her cover of Interpol's "Slow Hands" and get ready to cry into your beer.
6. Black Marble – A Different Arrangement (Hardly Art)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   I know absolutely nothing about Black Marble, but listen to A Different Arrangement and you're convinced they must have been making music forever...under water. There's a muted, dreamlike quality to this album that inexplicably makes me want to put on a really long wig and dance in slow motion.
7. Bat for Lashes – The Haunted Man (Capitol)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   Every so often, my boyfriend sends me what he's started calling "Maddie-bait": ornate, synth-heavy melodies with soaring female vocals and lots of talk about emptiness and being alive and how the light looks. Bat for Lashes already did all those things really well, and The Haunted Man takes the whole operation past the land of Florence + the Machine and into the wild territory of Kate Bush. There's horns and harps and bells and feelings. So many feelings.
8. Grimes – Visions (4AD)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   In another universe, my skinnier, blonder, younger sister might have made lush, unintelligible songs on a keyboard in her bedroom instead of going to college to study microbiology. As it stands, I am content to let to Grimes do her thing while I keep twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
9. Twin Shadow –Confess (4AD)
   BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
   I heard Twin Shadow for the first time while waiting for Frank Ocean to take the stage at Lollapalooza this past summer. It was Saturday, the day that rained out Grant Park, so all the shows were moved back about an hour, which meant that it had just started to get dark when George Lewis Jr. and his band took the stage. The impending darkness, the gratuitous fog machines, the sway of sweaty strangers and the thrum of the synthesizers proved that while the '80s might be neither here nor there, I was relieved that Twin Shadow most certainly was.
10. Santigold – Master of My Make Believe (Atlantic)
    BUY: Reckless / Permanent / Insound / iTunes / eMusic
    I missed seeing Santigold at Lollapalooza in favor of the Frank Ocean show mentioned above, and I'm still wishing I could have caught her. Master might be less surprising than her 2008 self-titled debut, but if you can't dance to it there's something wrong with you, because half these songs sound ready to become hooks on the next KanYe album, if they haven't already.