The ObserverMusicThe top 101 The Good, the Bad & the Queen - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
In recent years, Damon Albarn has cut a David Byrne-like figure. With his own label that excavates worthy world-y musics, and his score to the 'circus opera' Monkey: Journey to the West (recalling Byrne's collaboration with Twyla Tharp), Blur's frontman has matured into one of those honourable elder types that plug away at mildly ambitious projects long after their popmoment has passed.
The news, then, that Albarn had formed a supergroup, the Good, the Bad & the Queen, was not especially pulse-quickening. The name was unenticing, as was the motley line-up: ex-Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen. Yet when it arrived in January, the self-titled debut turned out to be - if you gave it time to let yourself sink into its diffuse melancholy - brilliant. As you would expect, there were echoes of the Kinks and the more fragile side of the Clash . But the sound was Britpop 'corrected': the insularity of that movement's version of musical Englishness opened wide to incorporate Allen's subtly unsettled Afro-beats and Simonon's reggae-inflected bass. Indeed like other good 2007 things - Burial and Pinch's dubstep, the Lady Sovereign album - this album's 'Waterloo Sunset'-in-dub sound showed how reggae has become part of every Briton's native pop birthright.
With its London references this was 'the record Peter Ackroyd might have made', as Simonon put it. But London here stood for the entire country, that 'stroppy little island of mixed-up people'. Albarn's imagery of floodwater and derelicts evoked the malaise that grips the UK . Where Britpop celebrated the invincibility of youth, the mood here was... vincible. The contrast between then and now is dramatised by the shift from Albarn's demeanour circa Parklife (the chipper, fresh-faced, perkyspined lad of the video) to the slumped, stubbly, mumble-voiced character of today. The backdrop of Iraq was crucial to the album's despondent vibe, but just as key was the time of life Albarn has reached. This was adult music, made by and for people who have been battered a bit by life.
Simon Reynolds
'It just evolved as we played it'
Paul Simonon tells how our No 1 album came about
'It's not a commercial record, so OMM's award shows that you can make music that moves people without going down the obvious route. I hadn't been in a band for 17 or 18 years, and then Damon asked me to listen to some tracks he'd recorded in Nigeria. I'd met him once before, at Joe Strummer's wedding reception. We shared ideas about people, musical styles and where we live. With the music, I wanted to complement Tony's drums. I'm not into over-complication - I'm not capable of it, to be honest. The lyrics, the London atmosphere, all that evolved as we played. There's a lot of craftsmanship on the record, and Damon has a vision for arrangements, and everyone slotted in around them.
'But it's all done now. We won't make another record, and we didn't properly name the band, because a name is for a marriage. I've got to catch up on some painting now. No dodgy solo albums, no comeback - not that I've ever been away. I've just been painting.'
2 Panic Prevention - Jamie T
The only classic album that begins with the line, 'Fucking croissant!', the debut by 22-year-old south Londoner Jamie Treays went Top 5 in January and prepared us for a year of mouthy young troubadours making lo-fi slice-of-life pop sung in estuary slang. But the more you absorbed this surreal and inspired record, the more it made its competitors sound hopelessly outgunned. Making links between Seventies punk, Noughties hip hop, hobo folk, Fifties rock'n'roll and Sir John Betjeman, Treays's real teenage panic attacks inspired a raw pop that isn't black or white, nor working-class nor middle-class, nor urban nor suburban; and it's this 21st century rootlessness that Treays both embodies and critiques. Add a unique bedsit rock'n'roll sound and a wealth of pop hooks, and you have a modern day classic.
Garry Mulholland
3 Because of the Times - Kings of Leon
On their third and best album, Tennessee's finest communed with all the truly great rock groups, calling upon the Allman Brothers, Led Zep, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, U2 and the Pixies to create a vast, desolate, strangely beautiful sound. What made the record much more than a join-the-dots history lesson was the strength of songs like 'Knocked Up', 'Camaro' and 'On Call', and the awesome fluidity of the playing: this is a band capable of shifting instantaneously from loose, spacey desert rock to mercilessly tight, dumb-as-hell frat boy riffology. There was, undeniably, a thuggish, misogynist menace not far beneath the surface of Caleb Followill's slurred, scratchy vocals. But amid the testosterone-drenched tales of sex and cars lay a deep Southern weirdness, the ache of vulnerability, and the unmistakable sound of an exceptional American band coming of age.
Graeme Thomson
4 Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem
If you had merely waded through the acres of laudatory press coverage accrued by James Murphy's sardonic New York disco-bunnies LCD Soundsystem, and never actually heard any of their records, you might think that they made music purely for a self-consciously clued-up clientele whose willingness to laugh at their own hipper-than-thou affectations renders them more self-satisfied, rather than less. At the time of Murphy and co's patchily inspired 2005 debut, this assumption was not too far from the truth. But with this beautifully integrated and emotionally acute second album, LCD Soundsystem upped their game to a different level altogether.
It's rare and special in these days of the iPod shuffle to hear a record whose unique character would be fatally compromised by playing any two of its tracks in a different order, but that's what Sound of Silver was. From the minimal opening pulse of 'Get Innocuous!' to the full-on Broadway show-tune finale of 'New York I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down', this album took you on a journey in which the sonic and lyrical elements were in perfect equilibrium.
There were not one but two dramatic climaxes, and even these were complementary - the heart-wrenching Krautrock eulogy of 'Someone Great' being effectively the melancholic yin to the upbeat, sociable yang of 'All My Friends'. When the latter song was released as an EP, including rival interpretations by John Cale and Franz Ferdinand, it felt like these were simply the opening shots in an extended campaign which should one day culminate in LCD cover versions by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Girls Aloud.
Ben Thompson
5 Maths and English - Dizzee Rascal
While grime flourished on mixtape, its former standard-bearers tried slipping into the mainstream. Dizzee Rascal led the way, as usual, his third album waving goodbye to the jagged beats of Bow for a glossier embrace of hip hop conventions and Lily Allen collaborations. A triumph.
Steve Yates
6 Aman Iman - Tinariwen
Aman Iman spectacularly fulfilled the Malian blues band's vow to plug us into the deep roots of rock'n'roll with trance-like numbers and guitar patterns as endless as their desert landscape. This year they supported the Rolling Stones, thus completing the West Africa, US blues, Surrey Delta circle.
Peter Culshaw
7 In Rainbows - Radiohead
The fuss surrounding Radiohead's seventh album was prompted mostly by the way in which it was delivered (download only; pay as much as you like). But for the first time since OK Computer , the band had struck a happy balance between innovation and accessibility, between rock and fidgety electronica. There was, crucially, a new-found tenderness, while Thom Yorke, especially on 'All I Need' and the luxurious 'Faust Arp', sounded like a man emerging from a lifetime of despair.
Paul Mardles
8 Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys
Their debut made writing fizzy pop gems look easy. But it would have been too easy just to repeat the trick. Instead, the band embraced their inner Queens of the Stone Age, piling crunchy guitars over wailing drum parts so ferocious that Matt Helders had to train in a boxing gym to stand a chance of recreating the sound live. Then, just to smite any pretenders, they flung out 'Fluorescent Adolescent' - the most instantaneously fizzy gem of their career - and made it sound like an afterthought.
Dan Martin
9 Untrue - Burial
Following his acclaimed 2006 debut, the elusive dubstep pioneer returned with a more complete and crepuscular soundtrack to urban decay. Reflecting and refracting the disparate styles of dance music's past two decades, the anonymous producer concocted an essential album of leftfield subterranean soul, underpinned by eerie, growling basslines and overlaid with spectral female vocals. The boy - whoever he is - done good.
Luke Bainbridge
10 Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
The transition from everyone's favourite new band to festival headliners can be tricky, and some fans of 2005's Funeral saw this follow-up as grandiose rather than grand, more melodrama than drama. The vastness of the sound (the church organ announcing 'Intervention', the calibrated surge of 'Windowsill') matched the ambition of the lyrics, which moved on from Funeral 's personal laments to a search for the individual's place in a world of environmental collapse and war. It was no surprise to see Win and Regine playing a couple of numbers in Ottawa with Bruce Springsteen later in the year - his searching lyrics and thumping sound provided the template for this big, big record.
Campbell Stevenson
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