Chambered's Top 40 Albums Of 2010
Here it is, my top 40 of the year, 2010. This year has been chock full of incredible records and as such it was extremely difficult to make this list, especially the top 15 where any number of albums were worthy of top honors, However I do believe I got it right. Hope you enjoy :] |
| 40 |  | Dangers
Messy, Isn't It?
I didn't really listen to a lot of hardcore music in 2010 so it wasn't too difficult for this zany, fun as hell album to stand out amongst the crowd. Best Track: "Check, Please" |
| 39 |  | Crocodiles
Sleep Forever
A retro-modern noisy affair with certainly one of the best songs of the year. Best Track: "Girl In Black" |
| 38 |  | wait what
the notorious xx
A truly splendid display of mashup ability, combining the XX's light, airy indie and Biggie's firey, dense raps makes for a unique and interesting listen. Best Track: "Suicidal Fantasy" |
| 37 |  | Circa Survive
Blue Sky Noise
just another solid outing from Anthony Green and co, this time more focused and direct in its songwriting but not nearly as enjoyable as Juturna's experimental bite. Best Track: "Glass Arrows" |
| 36 |  | The Dillinger Escape Plan
Option Paralysis
Despite keeping up the intensity and having 2 of the strongest tracks of the year, nothing stands out here to merit anything higher than 36th. Best Track: "Gold Teeth On A Bum" |
| 35 |  | Punch
Push Pull
female fronted, agressive as hell band. Push Pull is one of the heaviest, non-stop albums of the year. Best Track: "Sour Grapes" |
| 34 |  | Sleeping Village
Fragments
A black metal album that is as welcoming as it is evil; a beautiful, almost shoegazey dive into reflective waters. Best Track: "My Quality of Being" |
| 33 |  | Acres.
Silos
A lovely little ditty of a summer-ish emo album, light consonant guitar work and sing-along chants make up the groundwork for this pleasant surprise. Best Track: "Your House Song" |
| 32 |  | Sufjan Stevens
The Age Of Adz
Sufjan loses his mind then creates a grower of an album that bleeps and bloops its way into oblivion. Best Track: "I Want To Be Well" |
| 31 |  | The Roots
How I Got Over
Honestly, has there ever been a Roots album that hasn't made the end of the year top album list? Not their best, but still really, really solid. Best Track: "How I Got Over" |
| 30 |  | Akira Kosemura
Grassland
Minimalist night music that is the equivalent of being in Tokyo during the waning twilight hours. Beautiful listen. Best Track: "Over The Horizon" |
| 29 |  | Adversarial
All Idols Fall Before the Hammer
An unrelenting, passionate, forceful album that sits on the good side of metal in 2010. Best Track: "In A Night of Endless Pain, War Came to Flood
His Heart" |
| 28 |  | Rosetta
A Determinism of Morality
Not a big year in post-metal but this colorful, heavy piece does its job in the genre's department. Not nearly as good as Satellites however. Best Track: "A Determinism Of Morality" |
| 27 |  | Lunik
Small Lights In The Dark
Lunik is one of the most amazing female pop voices I have ever heard and this, my first venture into her work, is nothing short of gorgeous. Best Track: "Everything Means Nothing" |
| 26 |  | Parades
Foreign Tapes
One of the best indie rock debuts in some time, Foreign Tapes makes you feel apart of the air you breathe. Best Track: "Loserspeak In New Tongue" |
| 25 |  | Deftones
Diamond Eyes
At first you're like holy shit this is incredible look at what they have done without their bassist look at how consistent and varied it is. While you soon come slightly down to earth from that inital feeling, it's still one of the best albums of the year. Best Track: "You've Seen The Butcher" |
| 24 |  | Heinali And Matt Finney
Lemonade
Just listen. Thats all I can say. Thanks Brandon :] Best Track: "End Of July" |
| 23 |  | Swans
My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
Swans are a strange band, combining post-punk with whatever the hell else they can come up with to make a very strong, tightly wound sound that fits in perfectly with a night of too many psychadelics. Best Track: "Jim" |
| 22 |  | Atheist
Jupiter
These niggas are back and (almost) better than ever. A fuck fest of metal. Best Track: "Faux King Christ" |
| 21 |  | Axeman
Arrive
It isn't so much the brutal, evil nature of this album that gets to you as much as the sudden flourescent ghouls that start popping up in your bedroom as soon as you put this on. Best Track: "Metnaol |
| 20 |  | Alcest
Ecailles De Lune
La good le album, le beau et les awesome. Best Track: "Écailles De Lune (part II)" |
| 19 |  | Deerhunter
Halcyon Digest
Expands upon Microcastle to create a fuzzy, almost classic-rock sounding near-masterpiece. Best Track: "He Would Have Laughed" |
| 18 |  | Immolation
Majesty And Decay
fucking HEAVY man. Best Track: "A Glorious Epoch" |
| 17 |  | Daft Punk
Tron: Legacy
A soundtrack for (Tron: Legacy) your hoverboard drive over the city at midnight, when all the lights are on and the sky is but an open vessel to crank up the tunes and the mph. Daft Punk take their signature style of house and add in Zimmer-esque theatrical composition to make an astounding score. Best Track: "Derezzed" |
| 16 |  | Trophy Scars
Darkness, Oh Hell
I feel like at some point in time Trophy Scars got into a really big bar fight and then decided to emulate their entire career around that fight. Must've been a brawl man. Best Track: "Sad Stanley" |
| 15 |  | Oceansize
Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up
A brilliantly constructed, beautiful album that goes seemingly everywhere in its own bright spectrum. Songs either pounce on you with fierce rhythms or sway above you with gorgeous melody. One of the harder albums to rank in recent memory. Best Track: "Superimposter" |
| 14 |  | Flying Lotus
Cosmogramma
A shit-ton of fun and intergalactic soundscapes that border on holy fucking what the fucking shit. Best Track: "Do The Astral Plane" |
| 13 |  | Big Boi
Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
Raunchy, brilliant beats, Big Boi should be called Big Man. Best Track: "Fo Yo Sorrows" |
| 12 |  | Dark Time Sunshine
Vessel
As much as some of the vocals kinda make my stomach turn, Vessel is an incredible display of production, a fully realized hip-hop album that borders on perfection with singles abroad, density, subtlety, and colorful fun. One of the best hip-hop debuts in a long time. Best Track: "Run" |
| 11 |  | Max Richter
Infra
Infra is a soundtrack to a dream underwater with beautiful violin and piano passages that shimmer above haunting static and darkness. Best Track: "Infra 6" |
| 10 |  | The National
High Violet
Boxer bores/annoys the poop out of me, Alligator is cool but w.e., but this THIS is The National at their most mature and essential and perfect. Everything just works and brims with life. A consistency not found anywhere else. Best Track: "Bloodbuzz Ohio" |
| 9 |  | How To Dress Well
Love Remains
A wonderous forray into near-uncharted territory for RnB and expiremental electronica. Best Track: "Walking This Dumb" |
| 8 |  | Letlive
Fake History
Was number 1 for a few months until the album started to come back to Earth. Either way it's a ridiculously catchy and hard-hitting album with memorable parts for all. Best Track: "Muther" |
| 7 |  | MellowHype
BLACKENEDWHITE
The most swag of any hip-hop album of the year, memorable rhymes, memorable nuance-filled beats, Mellowhype reeks of confidence. Best Track: "Loaded" |
| 6 |  | Warpaint
The Fool
My goodness. Just listen everybody who hasn't. Just listen. Atmosphere unparalleled in 2010. Best Track: "Undertow" |
| 5 |  | The Tallest Man On Earth
The Wild Hunt
A folk album for the decade. Best Track: "King Of Spain" |
| 4 |  | Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
You get to see Kanye truly come into his own on Fantasy, his best effort to date by far that incorporates all sides of his soul. You have to commend someone, asswipe or not, that puts literally everything he has into his art. Mainstream hip-hop has never been this bold or solid. Best Track: "Monster" |
| 3 |  | Titus Andronicus
The Monitor
It's hard to put the brakes on this unstoppable train of profound lyrics for this morally-inverted world and hands-to-the-sky, boisterous indie rock. Aside from the fact that anybody who is anybody who has had some sort of loss or pain in their life can relate, it's the little civil war speeches scattered throughout that truly put this in a world of its own. Especially the one right before the unquestionable song of the year, as told originally by Abraham Lincoln, which is spoken underneath some truly incredible guitar feedback and sound: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Holy shit. Best Track: "The Battle Of Hampton Roads" |
| 2 |  | Janelle Monae
The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III of IV)
Pop never even came close in 2010. Best Track: "Say You'll Go" |
| 1 |  | The Knife
Tomorrow, In A Year
When Looking back on 2010 in music, I will remember listening to The Knife's juggernaut masterpiece at a low time in my life, where I had no car and had to walk 10 miles to work in blizzards, everyday. The sky was so low then, even the streetlights seemed derpessed as their shine was muffled by wind and ice and fog. I'll always remember Tomorrow, In A Year because of those memories, not because this has anything to do with my life or what I was going through, but because it allowed me to be immersed in something completely detached from my own living experience. A Darwin-opera fully realized, The Knife go from the beginning specs of life to the full fledged chaos of modern society, sprawling unbelievable amounts of creative touch and vision. Best Track: "Colouring Of Pigeons" |
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