The LPC Staff's Top Ten of 2010: Sawyerson

Good morning and go to hell. Black Friday is a woman of negotiable affection and I'm not waiting until 5 AM again for cheap basketball tickets.

Anyway, Sawyerson's got a top five list of albums ready for us today. Because he wasn't able to listen to an overbearing amount of new music this year, he made the decision to just post five albums. As a bonus, he's included his least favorite album of the year.

Take it away, Sawyerson:

5. Bee vs. Moth - Acronyms

I plan on posting this album soon so I won't spoil much of it. I will say that it's a genre-bending escapade built on a foundation of Latin jazz. It's definitely one of the more fun albums I've heard recently.

4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

I'm sure many of the LPC writers will have this on their list somewhere and my thoughts will probably be among the least insightful. That's because this album doesn't make me want to think about with any depth. It doesn't capture me like Funeral or Neon Bible do. That being said, it is catchy enough to entertain me. That's not quite what I want from a band like Arcade Fire, but it's something.

3. Univers Zero - Clivages

The_Red_Agent posted a great review of this album back in August. This is a wonderful chamber rock album with some beautiful melodies but also with an undeniable dark overtone.

2. Marco Benevento - Between the Needles & Nightfall

This was the very first album posted on LPC and it might still be my favorite. It's some of the only music I've heard that relaxes me and commands my attention at once.

1. Neil Young - Le Noise

Just about every review I've read of this album has used the same word to describe it, and I'm going to use it too: Raw. Le Noise features Neil Young, his voice, and his guitar, as presented to us by producer Daniel Lanois. This is a very intimate album with lyrics ranging from seemingly autobiographical, to storytelling, to thoughts on the world in which we live today. This album could very well be entirely acoustic but Neil Young performs six of the eight songs with an electric guitar. The result is a crunchy sound that contrasts with Young's high voice. This album is truly a sonic experience.

Since I was only able to provide five albums, I thought I'd also share my least favorite album of 2010.

Fitz & the Tantrums - Pickin' Up the Pieces

If you could somehow look up two words in the dictionary at once and view the combined definition, Pickin' Up the Pieces would be the result of the combination of "blue-eyed soul" and "plagiarism." There is no reason for an album like this to be made in 2010. This is nothing but a feeble attempt at creating a whited-up version of soul music, which I'm pretty sure was old by the '80s.

So today you've seen a #1 that's really unlike any other #1 album we've had this week, but there's also some common appearances on here - the Suburbs will be on a lot of lists, Univers Zero will make it onto a few, etc.

Today is Black Friday. Second servings of turkey can't come soon enough.