vendredi 11 Jan 2013, 14h15m

Every year I pick the album that most impressed me during the year. It is rarely my favorite album of the year but rather the one that affected me the most. These albums are so good that they typically change the focus of my taste in music.

This year's choice is relatively straight forward: Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra, Theatre is Evil. Although I delved further into pop than I have in almost a decade, with standout favorites being Taylor Swift's Red and Ke$ha's Warrior, and there were solid releases by several bands that I love this year, including Blink-182 and Crystal Castles, Amanda Palmer's music took me by surprise and took me to a place that I haven't been in several years. I loved it.

Amanda Palmer was born to make music. She combines the best parts of Tori Amos with Ani DeFranco, and embeds it in the drama and theatricality of Emilie Autumn. It was love at first listen, and the more I paid attention to her work, the more I discovered that I liked. Her lyrics are literate and informed, and though they oscillate between manic cynicism and overly idealistic optimism, there is a human being beneath it all who is touch with her feelings. She *knows*. And if you *know*, she is like a prophet professing truths before us.

I had the rare pleasure of seeing Ms. Palmer perform on New Year's Eve, where she played many of her own, wonderful, works, and then delivered the entirety of Prince's Purple Rain, complete with an explosion and shower of purple confetti. I wouldn't have believed it unless I saw it. There are very few musicians who could have pulled this off, and she really did. As she tweeted that night. It was amazing. Perfect. And that's why Theatre is Evil is my best album of 2012.

Previous winners:
2001: Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory
2002: Hawksley Workman – (Last Night We Were) The Delicious Wolves
2003: Blink-182 – Blink-182
2004: Conjure One – Conjure One
2005: Imogen Heap – Speak for Yourself
2006: Rise Against – The Sufferer & the Witness
2007: Emilie Autumn – Opheliac
2008: Reggie and the Full Effect – Last Stop: Crappy Town
2009: Fischerspooner – Entertainment
2010: Die Antwoord – $O$
2011: S – I'm Not As Good at it as You