Our Top 50 albums of 2007 countdown continues... from Arcade Fire to Jamie T, via Burial and LCD Soundsystem
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
See this Sunday's OMM for a chance to win all 50 albums.
