Top 20 Best Albums of 2010

For the past two years, melophobe invited its contributors to vote for their favorite albums blindly, unaware of what other contributors were loving and loathing. In 2010, we got proactive. From January on, we shared music, and when voting time came, the gloves came off. Friendships may have been broken over Sleigh Bells, Mumford & Sons, and Kanye West, and the phrase, “If [Big Boi / Sufjan Stevens / the National] doesn’t make the list, I quit,” was said more than once. But after all the votes came in, melophobe’s twenty voters produced a rather unified list. In fact, the top seven albums earned points from over half of the voters. We could offer more analysis here, but that’s where you come in.

A note on our method: 20 voters had 100 points each to distribute to a maximum of 15 albums, with a maximum of 15 points per album.

We got a little wordy below, so for you lazy folks, here’s the summarized list:

20. Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
19. The Black Keys - Brothers
18. Die Antwoord - $O$
17. The Walkmen - Lisbon
16. Beach House - Teen Dream
15. Yeasayer - Odd Blood
14. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
13. The Roots - How I Got Over
12. Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More
11. Vampire Weekend - Contra
10. Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
09. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
08. Sleigh Bells - Treats
07. Menomena - Mines
06. Big Boi - Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
05. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz
04. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
03. The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
02. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
01. The National - High Violet

Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies is the new wave kids’ romance movie soundtrack. It’s background music for sad sex on the miserable night before the protagonist’s lover takes a one-way flight out of town. It’s Michelle Pfeifer in “Ladyhawke” with her black hooded cape and Athena-like ability to morph into a hawk and fly away just as Matthew Broderick falls for her. This is make-out music, goddammit. Each instrumental layer gently introduces itself alongside a solid trip-hop rhythm that maintains its danceable intensity throughout the album. Sarah Barthel winds her sugared voice around vigorous electronic drums, twitchy snaps and shakers, and chipper bells that prove ironic when juxtaposed with her somber lyrics. The opening track, “Mouthful of Diamonds,” is a deceptively spry number, presumably about a breakup, similar to Emily Haines’ “Too Little Too Late.” The difference lies in the delivery; where Haines is abstract and aggressive, Barthel surrenders to the weight imposed by her grief. A few tracks later, guitarist Josh Carter spouts his own woes in “Running from the Cops,” delivered with a vocal effect that makes him sound like he’s under water. The mood turns dire here: “My dreams will never come true, and if they ever, ever do, it’s never you.” “As Far as I Can See” keeps us down by reminding us that: “…nobody loves me. And as far as I can tell, nobody loves you either.” “Let Me Go” drops us further into the quiet dens of romantic separation, while “10,000 Claps” hits absolute bottom with its sparse combination of muffled piano and Barthel’s sleepy croons of “Wishing away… kissing my grave…when can you take me back home?” The final song, “When I’m Small (Lucy’s Version)” is a subdued remix of the second track. The effect of this repeat is a sense of coming full circle, of returning to the beginning, as all good stories, and memories, do. - Carrie Johnston

Die Antwoord came to me whispered as a shameful secret at the end of a business meeting, followed immediately by a wall-sized video projection of Ninja’s balls swinging forward and back in his Dark Side of the Moon boxer briefs. Needless to say: instantly hooked. Listening to the album in its entirety (and the associated additional filler throughout the year) only set the hook deeper.

There are a couple of obvious winners on $O$ (originally self-released in an extended version by the South African crew in 2009), and you’re probably familiar with the video for “Enter the Ninja”. If not, do yourself the favor. Throughout the album, Die Antwoord is clever, rhythmic, and articulate in at least three languages, switching among English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa (on ”Evil Boy”) to create the most effective rap-rave they can. But my oh my, are they ever filthy. . .

FILTHY!

. . . filthy to the point of wishing I didn’t know some of the lyrics (see, e.g., the tripped-out, club-ready “Beat Boy”). It’s filthy to the point of needing to scrub myself down with a pumice stone: filthy to the point of blushing. And so, so fun.

I know that not everyone loves the sound of Afrikaans, just like some have a bug up about songs in German. To a certain extent, this is cultural and based on (similar) political associations rather than objective beauty of the languages, but Afrikaans is the perfect language to spit what gets spat on $O$. Full of plosives and gutturals, the language graphically propels the rhymes and rhythms, highlighting the rapid-fire skills of Ninja and Yo-landi Vi$$er throughout the album and adding a layer of grit for these American ears that is not so evident in the English. Ninja has claimed to be all of South Africa’s rainbow fucked into one person. Along those lines, Die Antwoord’s rise in the US was accompanied by an “Is this serious?” self-consciousness, followed by “It’s a joke, oh man, I soooo didn’t fall for that, haha suckers!” afterbirth. As I thought then—and think even more so today—even if the whole Die Antwoord concept is a prank and a joke, it’s still better than most of the stuff we listened to all year long, lightyears ahead of most of the “serious” musicians we normally spray shorts over.

If you’re just now giving your first listens, I suggest focusing on “Rich Bich,” “Evil Boy,” and “Wat Kyk Jy.” “Enter the Ninja” should, of course, be the introduction you use on your unsuspecting, trusting relatives and friends when you go home for Christmas. I wouldn’t let your mom listen along, though. - Ari Sommer

Relationships between brothers can be wildly different from one to the next, but most such sibling bonds follow the common themes of good times, laughter, and tall tales of who smooched which girl first. It’s this kind of brotherhood that spills out all over the Black Keys’ 2010 release Brothers, making it clear that Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach have formed a familial type of relationship all their own. In the past couple of years following the acclaimed, Danger–Mouse produced album Attack and Release, it’s as if the Black Keys brothers split to attend separate colleges, and thus discovered plenty more awesome to add to their sound as a group. Brothers brashly depicts the romantic and musical battles they’ve suffered through, and through these hardships, the boys crafted a more polished product that experiments with uptempo grooves, funkier styles, and a wide variety of unexpected instruments and sounds.

The album’s beginnings feel a bit like a funkadelic jungle boogie, replete with all the necessary bells and whistles. “Tighten Up” is the only track on the album produced by Danger Mouse, and its huge popularity on the airwaves can be explained by the swaggering charm present in each line of the song. But it’s the hand-clappin’, fist-shakin’ of “Howlin’ For You,” and the murkiness of “10 Cent Pistol,” and the brazen rustiness of “Sinister Kid” that really define Brothers. Lots of the lyrics are focused around what love’s got to do with everything, and they get nicely tossed up with Hammond organ plugs, Mexican guitar swipes, and chug-a-lug drum beats. There’s plenty of blues to this album that placed the Black Keys higher on the charts than ever before, but there’s also fun where fun is needed. Carney and Auerbach have created yet another terrific record, one that shows how much these boys deserve that proverbial paycheck they’ve been working so long and hard to get. - Nicci Boots

I have listened to Lisbon enough times to conceivably karaoke all eleven tracks without looking at the lyrics. Hold your applause, please. This is a minor accomplishment. I’d expect praise if it were MC Solaar’s francophone hip hop or Kings of Leon’s first album (proving that song is the only medium where the word “soft” can legitimately be pronounced “saw-ooh”), but the Walkmen are easy. Hamilton Leithauser sings in well-enunciated English, with the album’s most prominent feature being his palpable woes and the colossal voice with which he expresses them. But this is no big achievement either, is it? The instrumentation is clean, with fewer layers and effects than their last album, You and Me. So why is this one so good if it’s so simple? Is Lisbon merely riding on previous waves of success? Are the songs just catchy, meaningless jangles destined for indie-pop-karaoke glory? Indeed not. Lisbon magnifies the jewel that has been there all along: Leithauser’s voice, pushing as far as its respiratory housing will allow without causing internal bleeding. This is where the anger flares and the words oscillate between quiet disappointment and victorious resurrection. Lisbon, in this way, is more Hamilton Liethouser than the Walkmen. But the instrumentation deftly supports his ascent to victory by never letting upsets explode out of proportion. Each song rests contentedly between two emotional extremes—self-pity and outright rage—without losing control or credibility. It’s in this teetering hammock of despair and triumph that Lisbon strikes the perfect chord. - Carrie Johnston

Forget “Ambling Alp.” That anomalously radio-friendly tune probably exerted a drag on the subsequent reception of Odd Blood, on the whole a far more meditative offering than its debut single would suggest. The trifecta of “Madder Rose,” “I Remember,” and “O.N.E.” is the real anchor of the album, a beautifully bizarre work that cements Yeasayer’s status as one of the most relentlessly innovative bands working today. Piecing together snippets of ‘80s synth-pop and catchy dance grooves into an avant-garde tapestry of nostalgia, remorse, deliverance, and ecstasy, Odd Blood is a work of art arguably unparalleled in the year’s releases. - Jarrod Dunham

You’d hate to be the guy drafted to play drums on the Beach House tour: the band uses only parsimonious variations on a single effete tempo—that of a woozy drum machine falling asleep after a long day at the fairground. Bound to this gossamer web, Victoria Legrande’s lusciously androgynous melodies struggle briefly—fumblingly ardent, somnambulically groping, insistently swooning—then die with a queasy shudder of radiant post-coital tristesse that will leave your pajamas sticky. Teen Dream, indeed.  - Andrew Iliff

When first exposed to Kristian Matsson (a/k/a The Tallest Man on Earth), people tend to react one of two ways. They either ask, “Where has this guy been all my life?” or “Why is yet another southern Dylan-esque finger-picker making headlines? Wait, he’s Swedish? Like Ikea Swedish? I just don’t get it.” While the Dylan comparisons will likely follow the Tallest Man his entire career, I venture to guess he takes that comparison, stuffs it in his pocket, and spryly moves on his way, picking and croaking musical and literary beauty down whichever road his career takes him.

With The Wild Hunt, Matsson continues to improve on all of the elements that made 2008’s Shallow Grave a strong enough effort to garner touring slots with the likes of Bon Iver and John Vanderslice. Filled with gorgeously painted metaphors and effortless wit, The Wild Hunt is a shining example of an artist hitting a groove. Meandering from the lively yet self-deprecating tones of the title track, through the blatantly optimistic, wide-eyed innocence of “King of Spain” and settling into the anthemic and seemingly conclusional™ (yes conclusional, I’m creating that term for this write up as it’s intimately fitting) “Kids on the Run” and “Like the Wheel,” the Tallest Man seems to know no emotional restraint in expressing himself as he reaches euphoric, child-like highs and sinks to artfully crafted, sarcasm-filled lows. Buy the ticket, take the ride. You won’t regret it. - Steve Benoit

The Roots’ How I Got Over plays like it’s been in my record collection for years. Instantly familiar, yet never creatively stagnant, it’s a direct slap in the face to those who claimed a cushy night spot with Jimmy Fallon would make the Roots Crew soft. Musically, How I Got Over doesn’t stray far from the sonic territory of its immediate predecessors, but ?uestlove and company show that they’re hip to the indie-crossover game by combining their considerable musical chops with the Monsters of Folk, Joanna Newsome and the ladies of Dirty Projectors. More impressive is how naturally said guests/samples are integrated; it feels as though the Roots have been doing it for years. Add to this mix Black Thought’s socially conscious lyrics and seamless transitions between tracks, and you’ve got a hip-hop album more versatile than any other this year and one that never wears out its welcome. - Josh Bean

Should it be on the list or shouldn’t it be on the list? This was one of those albums that faced being eliminated on a technicality. While most of us were privy to the emotion-filled, crescendo-laden artistry of Sigh No More when it was released by Mumford & Sons in the U.K. (October 2009), the official U.S. release wasn’t until February of 2010. Five months may not seem like a long time, but in music years it can make all the difference: you can play out an album, you can forget how songs affected you the first time you heard them, or (as is the case with Sigh No More) it can get picked up by every pop station on the planet and become the soundtrack to hit television shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” leading the band to lose their indie cred pretty quickly.

Regardless of over-exposure, the heartfelt intensity and dynamic nature of Mumford & Sons’ first full-length release certainly deserves the recognition it’s received. If you feel that the band has already jumped the proverbial shark, I recommend grabbing a ticket (if you can find one) and seeing them perform live. As the band’s Ben Lovett told Variety: “We don’t have a massive, high-production show. It’s just the four of us standing in line, playing our instruments with as much heart as we can.” Experiencing the live show will certainly revive some of the initial feelings of adoration you felt for the album. - Steve Benoit

If anything, Vampire Weekend should be praised for helping people study for the SATs. I know I’m not the only one who has looked up “horchata” and “balaclavas.” Disregard their polo shirts and Ivy League education. The lyrical content strikes a nice balance between the narrative of “Diplomat’s Son” and the whimsical auto-tuned “California English.” Vampire Weekend could’ve predicted the mild disappointment that people would have when Contra lacked the same caliber of island-y bounce as their self-titled debut, but Contra maintains that same jumpy syncopation with a little more ambition. The lullaby keyboard of “Taxi-Cab” and drum tracks of “Giving Up the Gun” show evolution in their sophomore effort. Vampire Weekend didn’t do a complete 180, but rather built upon ideas from the first album, such as the tremolo picking in “Cousins” recalling the instrumental breaks in “Mansard Roof.” For anyone who expected another “A-Punk” or string quartet sections, Vampire Weekend might not have delivered. But for those who like Vampire Weekend’s catchy rhythms, almost minimalist guitar, and cutesy lyrics, it’s all there.  As a strong, confident second album with no lack of standout tracks, Vampire Weekend delivers with Contra. - Michael Zonenashvili

Gorilla Manor is, by some methods of accounting, the oldest album on melophobe’s 2010 Top Twenty. Coming out first in the UK in November of 2009, it wasn’t released Stateside until February. What makes it particularly enduring in a best-albums-of-the-year kind of way is its ability to subvert the ubiquitous drums/guitar/bass (and keyboard?) rock format just enough to be both captivating and familiar. It’s a bombastic (particularly in the first-half), youthful record that relies heavily on percussion for its energy. The drums manage this not with speed or high-wire acrobatics, but with unconventional arrangements. Drummer Matt Frazier uses the whole kit to thread the beat rather than overly relying on hi-hats or rides. This assortment of drum voicings (rim clicks, toms, snare, kick drum) doing the traditional work of the thinner-sounding cymbals give the songs a more resonant percussive timbre that moves in and out of the listener’s expectations so subtly that it’s difficult on first listen to pin down just why the drums are so distinctive. Similarly, the slightly de-tuned guitars and two- and three-part vocal harmonies provide a richness that blends with and balances the drums. Occasionally (on “Who Knows Who Cares,” e.g.) the parts don’t come together, sounding the way a 3-D movie looks without the glasses. But when it works—and it works far more often than not—Local Natives feel immediate and impressive, like the next big thing just landed in your lap. - Daniel Couch

If we wanted to play the “It sounds like if this and this had a baby” game with The ArchAndroid, you’d want to stop after imagining the baby of David Bowie and Prince before you got to the other million influences. From Janelle Monae’s rap, be-bop, soul, funk, and disco touches, there is a creation that should be abominable, but works wonderfully. From the cinematic and spacey overture, Monae sets you in her universe of time-travel, androids, and secret societies. Janelle Monae is a character actress, carrying out the story of her album as Cindi Mayweather, and translating this personality methodically in her live show. While belting out soulful crooning, smoothly rapping on “Dance or Die,” or bouncing vocals off of Kevin Barnes in “Make the Bus,” Monae keeps the straight face of a method actor as she completely embodies her character. To call this album ambitious is an understatement. It does not rely on star-studded collaborations with artists like Barnes and Big Boi, but rather uses them to bolster her prowess as an extremely intelligent musician. In all, it is a compelling pop album that doesn’t use the standard conventions of a single “big hit,” but rather encourages a listen-through of an entire album, hearing every dissociated identity in The ArchAndroid’s personality disorders. - Michael Zonenashvili

You can’t even being to appreciate Sleigh Bells if you’re playing them out some cheesy-ass speakers. You deserve to be hit by the cacophony of bass and distorted melody as it vibrates through your limbs and brainwashes your senses. Whatever b.s. that dominated your day is irrelevant—now is the time for steering wheel drum solos and throwing yourself almost to the floor. Now is the time for Treats.

Each song is beautifully brief, just enough time to lose your mind and learn all the words. What appears to be the chorus of several beautiful cheerleaders is merely the voluminous expansion of Alexis Krauss’ slick vocals into Derek Miller’s nasty guitar riffs. From the hypnotically repetitive “A,B Machines” to the cheers of “Infinity Guitars,” Sleigh Bells sacrifices a lyrical depth for a higher purpose: positive and forceful energy. - Danielle Fowler

Mines is eleven songs from three distinct voices, literal and figurative: Danny Seim/bizarre storytelling; Brent Knopf/existential contemplation; and Justin Harris/brutally honest conversation. With three songwriters, the album could’ve felt like a disjointed collection of tracks. Menomena, however, pulled together an engaging, heartbreaking, and cohesive masterpiece. Sound motifs and natural thematic transitions make Mines flow beautifully. Throughout the album, we hear recurring, signature Menomena sounds: barritone sax, organ-like synths, clicky rim shots, echoey harmonies. Often one element in a song will carry through to the next, like the fluttering keys that tie “Five Little Rooms” to “Sleeping Beauty.” Each track seems to respond to the previous. In the opener “Queen Black Acid,” Harris sings of the emasculating experience of trusting a person who breaks your heart. Then “TAOS”—a testosterone-drenched jam, replete with guitar screeches, crashing cymbals, and Harris’ yelps—lets the sad sack protagonist from “Queen Black Acid” indulge his misogynist feelings, hitting on anything with a pulse. After Harris wrestles with the “beast with no control,” Knopf responds with his own struggle, the ghost inside, in “Killemall.” Though some lyrics feel heavy-handed in their sobriety (see “Tithe”), Menomena balances this with touches of levity: the “boing-oing-oing,” effect in “Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such a Big Boy,” the ballpark organ in “Killemall,” the over-the-top simile “like a bobsled without the teamwork and the televised support” (at least, I hope that’s intended humor).

All these commendable elements—the diverse songwriting styles, the unifying sound motifs, the humor—can also be found in Menomena’s three previous albums. Mines surpasses these likewise admirable releases, however, by showing hints of maturity. Harris has now perfected the balance between vulnerable loner (“Queen Black Acid” and “Oh Pretty Boy”) and forceful rock star (“TAOS” and “BOTE”). Knopf has lost his Daniel Johnston-like warble and Seim no longer trails off on lyrics, both now singing with full confidence. In fact, Seim created a true anthem in “Dirty Cartoons,” which serves as a cathartic crowd sing-a-long in their live performances. 

Though it was a long three-year wait (and, according to the band, an excruciating writing process), Mines undoubtedly exceeds expectations for this already acclaimed band. - Beth Doreian

Stop reading this paragraph and start listening to this album. Musical layers are packed in like the Paleozoic Era, and clever wordplay, choirs, and stacatto brass shake out like some Texas Pete droppin’ on your collard greens. It’s infectious, ambitious, and contains a stunning attention to detail worthy of the three years it took to complete. Albums that grab your attention with catchy hooks on the first listen and hold up again and again on replay are nearly impossible to find. And General Patton knows it. He boasts, “I write knock out songs, you spit punch lines for money.” Argument over. - Joshua Holt

When the opening track announces, “Words are futile devices,” how can this reviewer hope to fully explain what makes The Age of Adz such an amazing album? As a starting point, dedicated listening bears good fruit—not in a clichéd “the album grows on you” way, but more that it takes some physical and emotional time to fully listen to it. My recommendation is to bring it along for a long car ride; it takes being surrounded by the album, not distracted. And once you have accomplished a listening, you notice that for all the sound and fury heralding a changed Sufjan, he sounds just like the one you’ve known and loved since Seven Swans.

Sufjan has stated that he wanted to move away from the veneer of songwriting, less scholarship, characters, and setting. As such, the album weaves together the threads of outsider artist Royal Robertson, Sufjan’s intense physical ailments, broken relationships, and the eventual consummation of all things to form a jumbled narrative structure. Where Michigan and Illinois provided concrete imagery, the pastiche of The Age of Adz permits Sufjan to explore his inner musical and emotional experience with greater depth. The end result is a deconstruction of the Sufjan mystique: gone is the winged troubadour of song, and in its place an eschatological prophet who is lost within his art but accompanied by syncopated dance moves.

On the supporting tour for the album, the concluding song most nights was the Illinois track John Wayne Gacy Jr., a haunting admission of evil hidden under a pleasant exterior. The Age of Adz echoes this sentiment in “Vesuvius,” where voices sing, “Sufjan, the panic inside/The murdering ghost/That you cannot ignore.” Here is a fitting example of how Sufjan builds fractured themes that ebb and flow from song to song, and even album to album, into a resting place. Whether a failed conversation begun in the first song, which becomes a broken “I love you” seven songs later, or the agonizing despair from being told your illness is all in the head, the 25-minute opus of “Impossible Soul” unites all of the album’s disparate topics into a softly strummed coda: “We made such a mess together.” This music is challenging in its length, layering, and lyrical ambiguity. Sufjan Stevens has assembled a fitting love song to the End of Days, the end of love, and the end of state-based songwriting. Amen. - Ian Doreian

Dance music is great because it has the ability to make us forget about the minutiae of life and the worries we all so masterfully attach to it. Most artists use its flavors to fight a neverending battle for supreme synaptic engagement, but not James Murphy. His arrows help him create emotional sorting stations masked as songs, that while highly danceable, still pack enough depth to turn what is typically a genre of brain candy into one of brain food. An examination of relationships and other ruminations from a social observer, Murphy’s This is Happening is like a coded journal that gives you enough details to find meaning in his phrases, but not enough for you to see them as being anchored to a single person. And while the music that backs this can be giddy, reflective, or shockingly tender, at nearly every turn, it is masterful. On top of that, at 3:08 during “Dance Yrself Clean,” you hear what is easily the best moment in music this year as the pitter pat drum stick beat gives away into an avalanche of hard knockin’ synth-based grandeur. It is a moment that deserves high volume and attention, much like the rest of this record. In this tightly controlled world of aural mirages and sonic reveals, the joy of listening is frequently found in your pursuit of the details. His chirping background singers, the held-guitar line in “All I Want,” the Kraut rock-wall shrink of “One Touch“‘s synth sequencing: any dive below the upper crust is greeted with a reward. So much so that when Murphy says “Yeah, you wanted it smart, but honestly I’m not smart,” on “You Wanted A Hit,” all that’s left to say is, “what- the-fuck -ever.” - Colin McLaughlin

I can’t promise what The Suburbs will make you feel; somehow it has me alternately nostalgic for both my suburban youth and a hypothetical suburban middle-age, years in the future. What I can promise is that the songs on The Suburbs will move you. Packed with catchy guitar hooks, interesting orchestral instrumentation, and striking choruses filled with vocal harmonies, The Suburbs develops enough forward momentum to propel you from the opening title track through “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” in a heartbeat.

While some may critique the album as being too heavy-handed, with repeated diatribes on the monotony of suburbia and modern disillusionment, the tracks are simply too good to quibble about. Songs like “City With No Children,” “Modern Man,” and “Sprawl II” are the Arcade Fire at their best: arresting and interesting rock songs that will engage you regardless of your suburban roots, or even lack thereof. - Nick Brown

Before 2010, Kanye West had been a lot of things. He had been a rapper, a producer, an icon of sorts. A hip-hop hero and a publicity nightmare. Until this year, though, Kanye had never been one thing: Hungry. That all changed with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. For the first time we hear Kanye with a chip on his shoulder, ferociously focused within the context of the album’s rough-edged, sonically impressive beats. He’s not the only one, either; the guest verses he curates—from some of rap’s biggest stars—are vital and vibrant, avoiding the bored banality of most one-off contributions.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy explores the dark corners of Kanye’s megalomania—or genius?—with a deft touch. It’s an album that is starkly personal but also transcendent, pushing the boundaries of hip hop to incorporate ideas and theories often absent from the boom-bap of party rap. It’s a lush, ambitious album—equal parts arrogance, aspiration, and nearly flawless execution. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an innovative hip hop project that deserves to be recognized as one of the more complete albums in recent memory; Kanye set out with grandiose plans of redemption, and he delivered even more. - Chris Barth

When I first listened to High Violet, I didn’t know that I had heard the best album of 2010. But I knew that I wanted to listen to it again, immediately. There are some who would label the album categorically “too sad,” but sad is merely the jumping off point for this masterpiece. There’s a tangle of real, complex human emotion veiled behind Matt Berninger’s solemn baritone croon. Though there is pain at the source of his lyrics, his melodic laments are delivered with a scintilla of hope. High Violet wrangles with big themes: aging, loss, family, and love. It says what it needs to say, but teeters ambiguously in all the right places, creating an atmosphere at once approachable, evocative, and heartrendingly personal.

The album is easily The National’s most mature and polished work. Thematic broodiness is countered by levity in the form of long, seraphic phrases, droned by strings and horns, occasionally wrapped in blankets of haunting vocal harmonies. Happily, the core elements of the band’s sound never go away; warm, distorted electric strums push the boundaries of the lush soundscape, the songs churning ever forward atop an urgent, percussive pulse of tom drums and hi-hats. While the songwriting isn’t structurally groundbreaking, slow crescendos that bloom into jubilant choruses late in songs (see: “England") continue to resonate with every spin. Life is full of beautiful, poignant moments. Some of them hurt, and some of them lift us up. Berninger and company embrace these moments head-on, and the result is one of the most artful, honest, beautiful albums in recent memory. - Ben Piper

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