Here’s my two cents on the music released in the last year.

Best Rock & Pop albums of 2007

	1. Manic Street Preachers – Send Away the Tigers There’s something immensely satisfying about hearing a band you’ve followed for years returning to what they do best, which is writing songs that sound as epic as a Hollywood blockbuster. Musically, the album borrows equally from Everything Must Go and Generation Terrorists, providing visceral rock thrills without descending into hair metal wankery. Lyrically, the album conveys the same sadness-tinged optimism which made EMG such a poignant album. Put all of that together and it’s a welcome return to form for a band who many felt were starting to lose their edge.
	1. Radiohead – In Rainbows Speaking of welcome returns to form, here’s another band who were just starting to look vulnerable before they released this stunner. Leaving aside the innovative method of releasing the album, musically this is a vast improvement on Radiohead’s previous two studio albums and neatly synthesises Kid A’s experimentalism with OK Computer’s intricate and melodic guitar work. The result is an album of modern soul which brings to mind the Beatles’ most creative and experimental periods. I can’t chose between this and Send Away The Tigers, as both albums are very different in style but equally brilliant in their own right. Cop out, I know.
	3. Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris If Send Away The Tigers is the sound of an epic blockbuster, this is a fast-paced and violent film noir. The songs sound like they’ve been compressed in a vice so that what would be epic is now brutal, angry and violent. This is a good thing, and good to hear after 2005’s Lullabies To Paralyze, which sounded a bit, well, nice. Era Vulgaris is a much darker album, full of repetitive guitar riffs, lo-fi drum sounds and distorted synths, and it’s all the better for it.
	4. The Cribs – Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever It’s quite a skill to sound as raw and exciting as the Cribs do and yet still be capable of writing top quality pop songs. On lead single Men’s Needs Ryan Jarman spits barbed lyrics over the most infectious guitar riff of the year. Indie with the attitude that it should have.
	5. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Baby 81 If this album was BRMC’s second record rather than their fourth, they would be well on their way to conquering the world by now. After a spectacular first album they released a mediocre follow up, got dropped from their label and released a folk influenced album whilst their drummer was recovering from drug problems. Baby 81 sees them back on top form and produces the sort of raw, riff driven rock and roll which is sorely missing from music at the moment.
	6. Cherry Ghost – Thirst For Romance I havn’t had this album for long but I’m mightily impressed by it, even if it sounds like it was written to be played on Radio 2. It’s hard to believe that this band are from Bolton and not, say, Montana. Thirst For Romance is a prime slice of Americana, and conjures up the feeling of driving through the desert with Johnny Cash on the radio.
	7. Art Brut – It’s a Bit Complicated If you had to guess a band which would fail to produce a decent second album, Art Brut must have been a fair bet. The quirkiness of Eddie Argos’ lyrics about pop culture and wanting to be on Top of the Pops seemed like one of those one-off strokes of genius which only a small first album indie band could produce. Yet this follow-up retains most of the charm of the début, the main change being not Argos’ lyrics but the tightness of the music. It occasionally sounds a little too homogeneous but with pop punk hits as good as St Pauli (”Punk rock ist nicht tort!”) it’s hard to complain.
	8. Bloc Party – A Weekend in the City Another tricky follow-up album. Bloc Party’s second album might not be as monumental as their début, but that’s largely because in the past three years everyone else has caught up with them and indiedisco has become something of a phenomenon. This album adds more electronics and effects but loses some of the driving dance beat of early singles such as Banquet. The end result sounds more like Radiohead, Muse or even Bjork. Recent single Flux signifies a return a more straightforward and danceable style, but this time with almost a complete absence of guitars and a much heavier emphasis on electronic instruments. It will be interesting to see where they go from here, but meanwhile A Weekend in the City is a fascinating critique of London’s middle-class new media scene.
	9. Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus! Along with Mogwai, SFA were one of the few bands to consistently release good records during the shit period between the demise of Britpop in 1997 and the return of post-punk in 2002. After guitar music became popular again the Super Furries became even more eclectic, releasing increasingly experimental electronica records, which no doubt make complete sense from Gruff Rhys’ psychedelic world view but rather confused us mere mortals. On this album the band return to the guitar pop which made 1997’s Radiator such a gem amongst the dregs of Britpop.
	10. The Cooper Temple Clause – Make This Your Own Five years ago the Cooper Temple Clause released their début album, a spectacular manifesto and a complete destruction of rock as we knew it. Since then, they haven’t quite evolved and developed as successfully as you might have hoped. This is their first album without bassist Didz Hammond, who left to join Dirty Pretty Things in 2005, and the record misses the thunderous distorted bass riffs he provided. Nevertheless there are some moments of genius here. Lead single Homo Sapiens rocks with an angry nihilism and Connect has the sort of electronic rock sound that Bloc Party are only just starting to experiment with. Good as this album is, it wasn’t good enough for the band, who split shortly after its release.

See, this is easy. There’s been a helluva lot of good music released this year. Here’s ten more rock & pop albums worth listening to:

11. The Weakerthans – Reunion Tour
12. Babyshambles – Shotter’s Nation
13. Klaxons – Myths of the Near Future
14. Björk – Volta
15. Editors – The End Has a Start
16. The Enemy – We’ll Live and Die in These Towns
17. Biffy Clyro – Puzzle
18. Smashing Pumpkins – Zeitgeist
19. Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare
20. PJ Harvey – White Chalk

Best Hip Hop album of 2007

Public Enemy – How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? Hip hop is in a dire state at the moment. Really, it’s been in slow decline for the last 10 or 15 years, since gangster rap began to exert its cultural hegemony. It’s been interesting watching how the ‘golden age’ artists have evolved since the early nineties. Public Enemy have had mixed success in their attempts to better the sound of their early genre-defining records, but this is one of their best efforts. With the arguable exception of 1998’s There’s A Poison Goin On this is their best album in 15 years. Musically, on many tracks they’ve taken a leaf out of Amy Winehouses’ book by sampling/recreating the distinctive Motown sound of the sixties, and a few decent rock/rap crossover tracks pop up as well. Lyrically, the theme of this album is opposition to gangsta rap and the culture it embodies. Kanye who?

Best Dance albums of 2007

LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver It’s refreshing to hear dance music with decent lyrics. On North American Scum James Murphy gives an alternative take on the lyrical theme of Green Day’s American Idiot. “New York’s the greatest if you get someone to pay the rent/And it’s the furthest you can live from the government/Some proud American Christians might disagree/But New York’s the only place we’re keepin them off the street.” Then, one of the best couplets of this year- “You see I love this place that I have grown to know/And yeah, I know you wouldn’t touch us with a ten-foot pole.” Oh, and the rest of the album’s pretty damn good as well.

Soulwax – Most of the Remixes Soulwax (aka 2 Many DJs) have been doing quality remixes for years and this compilation features some of their best takes on dance, pop and indie tunes. It’s the latter genre which gives the most interesting results, especially bearing in mind the direction that indie is currently taking. The Gossip’s Standing In The Way Of Control is transformed from a lacklustre plodder to a high energy stomper, and the Klaxons’ Gravity’s Rainbow is sharpened immensely. The reverse process can be seen on Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head which becomes a dirty garage rocker with distorted guitars and live drumming. But by far the best thing on here is their take on LCD Soundsystem’s Daft Punk Is Playing At My House, which sucks you in over the course of seven minutes. Fantastic stuff.

Post your own favourite albums in the comments, fellow enthusiastic enjoyers of popular culture…