The top 100 albums of 2009

4 Manic Street Preachers: Journal for Plague Lovers (Sony)

It was a high-risk strategy - to unearth a book of lyrics written by former band member Richey Edwards before his disappearance 14 years ago - but it paid off. The group rose to the challenge and poured hearts and souls into the music.

5 Wild Beasts: Two Dancers (Domino)

The Kendal band returned rapidly to the studio for their second album, emerging with a dark and twisted tale of marauding men intent on mayhem, the bloodcurdling poetry of the lyrics meeting its match in the cacophonous falsetto vocals.

6 Madness: The Liberty of Norton Folgate (Lucky Seven)

We weren't surprised to find that Madness's new album was all about London (what else?); but we were surprised to find that they had made what might be the best album of their career.

7 Jamie T: Kings and Queens (Virgin)

The Wimbledon bard imbibed the spirit of late-Clash Joe Strummer, creating a record whose musical and lyrical twists and turns confirmed him as one of the most inventive and idiosyncratic British pop talents.

8 Monsters of Folk: Monsters of Folk (Rough Trade)

Sometimes supergroups really are super. This one brings us Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes, Jim James from My Morning Jacket and M Ward.

The combination works perfectly and their songwriting and singing styles complement each other rather beautifully.

9 Noah and the Whale: The First Days of Spring (Mercury)

Intruding on someone's private grief is regarded as a no-no, but in this instance Charlie Fink invited the world across his emotional threshold, on a break-up album whose wintry bleakness slowly gave way to the green shoots of recovery.

10 Dave Rawlings Machine: A Friend of a Friend (Acony)

After many years happily playing backup to Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings steps up to the mic and launches into an album's worth of songs that recall the timeless, surreal majesty of the Band at their finest.

11 Bat for Lashes: Two Suns (Parlophone)

Natasha Khan's brief, uncomfortable sojourn in America informed an extraordinarily ambitious account of alter egos at peace and war, to music so fearlessly located on the wilder creative shores that Khan alone can be called the true heir to Kate Bush.

12 Sibrydion Campfire Classics (Dell'Orso)

Owing a huge, but entirely healthy, debt to their countrymen the Super Furry Animals, Sibrydion's first English-language album is a riot of effortlessly catchy, impossibly bouncy pop.

13 Mos Def: The Ecstatic (Downtown)

A decade on, and with big-name hip-hop even more moribund than it was 12 months ago, one of its most significant late-1990s players shook himself down, put the creative wilderness years behind him and delivered a bona-fide alt-rap classic.

14 Brendan Benson: My Old, Familiar Friend (Echo)

Benson is best known as Jack White's partner in the Raconteurs, but here he returns to his solo career, turning out immaculate power-pop albums full of songs that should win over anyone who thinks Revolver is the best LP ever made.

15. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: It's Blitz! (Polydor)

Indie-pop sucking up to the mainstream usually results in dilution. Yet Karen O and her band upend that theory, the Blondie-recalling open warfare between all their inclinations (electro, rock, ambient and art-pop, success or fruitful semi-obscurity) resulting in a thrilling, absorbing third LP.

16 Bob Dylan Together Through Life (Columbia)

If not a major Dylan album, TTL is hugely enjoyable, with songs such as It's All Good and My Wife's Home Town showing him at his most relaxed and mischievous.

17 Wilco: Wilco (The Album) (Nonesuch)

Jeff Tweedy still knows how to pull on our heartstrings, and the duelling here between his hope-after-adversity lyrics and keening vocals, and Nels Cline's beautiful guitar-playing, produced an album studded with precious alt-country gems.

18 Sweet Billy Pilgrim: Twice Born Men (Samadhi Sound)

David Sylvian's label is the perfect home for a band who clearly agonise over every tiny sonic detail. Behind this painstaking approach lie some simply gorgeous songs.

19 Noisettes: Wild Young Hearts (Mercury)

Their second album could serve as a primer in how to tip your hat at the charts while retaining everything - not least Shingai Shoniwa's compelling vocal presence - that made you so cherishable initially.

20 Prefab Sprout: Let's Change the World with Music (Kitchenware)

Originally intended as the follow-up to 1990's Jordan: The Comeback, Let's Change the World with Music instead joined the - apparently lengthy - list of albums that Prefab Sprout's front man, Paddy McAloon, has recorded but never released. Finally unveiled this year, it's a treat for lovers of sophisticated pop.

Mark Edwards and Dan Cairns

New artists

1 THE XX: xx (XL)

The XX emerged with a first album so perfect, so confident, it had you pinching yourself. Sepulchral atmospherics, dubby bass, bursts of sweet soul music and girl-boy vocals added up to something not just magical, but miraculous.

2 Passion Pit: Manners (Columbia)

The juxtaposition of candy-coated melodies and lyrics documenting self-doubt and despair is not a new one, but Michael Angelakos took the concept both to new highs and deeper lows on a falsetto-led electro-soul masterpiece.

3 Fever Ray: Fever Ray (Rabid)

The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson responded to motherhood with an album of glacial sonic architecture, its unforgiving expanses conjuring up sleep-deprived mental churning. An electro classic.

4 The Duke and the King: Nothing Gold Can Stay (Loose)

Awash with the cadences and harmonies of the early-1970s Californian canyons.

5 La Roux: La Roux (Polydor)

Elly Jackson was everywhere this year, with as many column inches devoted to her ginger quiff as to her sublime, retro-electro singles.

6 Blue Roses: Blue Roses (XL)

Yorkshire's Laura Groves's ability to bend vocal and musical texture and structure to her will recalled early Kate Bush and mid-period Joni Mitchell.

7 Golden Silvers: True Romance (XL)

Throwing doo-wop, music-hall, disco-funk and early Bowie into the blender, Gwilym Gold's band set euphoria and dystopia to melodies many other writers would kill for.

8 Speech Debelle: Speech Therapy (Big Dada)

A worthy Mercury winner, with an album of laid-back, jazz-inflected hip-hop settings and school-of-hard-knocks lyrics.

9 Bombay Bicycle Club: I Had the Blues but I Shook Them Loose (Island)

These north London schoolboys took a ragbag of influences (Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, the Strokes) and paired them with lyrics thrumming with hormones, angst and jaded self-knowledge.

10 Local Natives: Gorilla Manor (Infectious)

This LA five-piece's debut hurled us off at endless tangents - into psychedelia or barber-shop, then towards afrobeat.

Dan Cairns

Left-field

1 The Green Pajamas: Poison in the Russian Room (Hidden Agenda)

The modest Seattle veterans have transcended the 1980s psychedelic revival that spawned them, essaying classy, mature guitar pop with nagging hooks and plangent playing. Jeff Kelly's 29th album might be the best record you never heard about this year.

2 Trembling Bells:Carbeth (Honest Jon's)

Alex Neilson's raucous, riveting and unprecedented fusion of free jazz and trad folk on Trembling Bells' debut album suggests even greater things ahead.

3 Darren Hayman: Pram Town (Track & Field)

Giving concrete concourses dignity and humanity, and raising a smile without sneering, Hayman's electronically enhanced indie-pop concept album did for Harlow's brutal architecture what Kraftwerk did for the German motorway network.

4 Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards, Steve Noble: Live at Café Oto (Bo'Weavil)

This sax, bass and drums trio, the most exciting improvisers in Britain today, are captured in full flow in downtown Dalston.

5 Bo Ningen: Koroshitai Kimochi (Stolen)

This 10in vinyl debut from a new Japanese quartet playing jazzed-up acid-punk was an unexpectedly essential artefact.

6 Corb Lund: Losin' Lately Gambler (New West)

Corb Lund writes succinct, subtle and wryly funny country songs about the minutiae of Canadian prairie life, channelling the railroad rhythms of Johnny Cash and the stoic sentiment of prime Steve Earle.

7 Magic Christian: Evolver (Dirty Water)

The Cuban-heeled rhythm and blues of Cyril Jordan's new band equalled much of the back catalogue of his Flamin' Groovies.

8 Death: ... For the Whole World to See (Drag City)

Overlooked in the early 1970s, Death were an African-American hard-rock trio who funked up the furious Detroit sound.

9 13th Floor Elevators: Sign of the 3 Eyed Men (Charly)

At last, the definitive, remastered, 10-CD study of Roky Erickson's Texan acid-rockers.

10 Derek Bailey and Agusti Fernandez: A Silent Dance (Incus):

From 2005, the final live performance by the great British improviser Derek Bailey.

Stewart Lee

World

1 Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics: Inspiration/Information (Strut)

Magnificent mayhem, as the godfather of Ethio-jazz teams up with Malcolm Catto's London band of outlaws. Everything from jazz horns to psychedelia is thrown into the mix.

2 Kronos Quartet: Floodplain (Nonesuch)

The Kronos players' earlier ventures into "ethnic" forms had their moments, but it all comes together on this glorious pilgrimage through the Middle East and South Asia.

3 Deolinda: Cancao ao Lado (World Connection)

Ana Bacalhau and her hip young colleagues combine strains of fado with a pop sensibility and an eye for the foibles of the people of Lisbon. The tunes are gorgeous.

4 Radiokijada: Nuevos Sonidos Afro Peruanos (Wrasse)

One of the brains behind Gotan Project, Christoph H Müller digs into Peru's African roots.

5 Griselda Sanderson: Harpaphonics (Waulk)

The nyckelharpa may look unwieldy, but in these hands it takes flight. The music twists from Nordic byways to the spaces of Africa.

6 CéU: Vagarosa (Six Degrees)

Brazilian music doesn't come cooler than this. Bossa nova and trip-hop rhythms shimmer as the Sao Paulo singer purrs.

7 Lura: Eclipse (Lusafrica)

The effervescent vocalist continues to patrol the percussive side of Cape Verde.

8 Paolo Conte: Psiche (Wrasse)

Now in his seventies, the Italian troubadour delivers yet more idiosyncratic songs.

9 Yasmin Levy: Sentir (World Village)

The Israeli-born Ladino singer tones down the flamenco flourishes in the most compelling performance of her career so far.

10 Bonga: Bairro (Lusafrica)

Angola's grand old man mixes samba with a dash of soul.

Clive Davis

Jazz

1 Melody Gardot: My One and Only Thrill (Universal)

Last year's debut album was compelling enough, but the young Philly singer-songwriter goes one better on this stunning after-hours odyssey. Her voice is even more seductive, and Vince Mendoza's string arrangements add a hint of film noir.

2 Colin Steele: Stramash (Gadgemo)

Windswept Celtic soul from the Scottish trumpeter's distinctive jazz-meets-folk band. The fiddles and horns carry you off on a hike through autumnal landscapes.

3 Kurt Elling: Dedicated to You (Concord)

The part-time beat poet and hippest jazz singer around goes time-travelling in a show inspired by John Coltrane's encounter with the balladeer Johnny Hartman.

4 Jenni Molloy: Bach ReLoaded (Jellymould)

Move over, Jacques Loussier. Molloy, a double-bass player, absorbs fragments of the suites and partitas in a series of conversations with the saxophonist Stuart MacDonald and the drummer Chris Sykes.

5 Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch)

One of the year's slow-burners finds the multifaceted R&B musician-producer wandering the back streets of the Big Easy.

6 The James Pearson Trio: Swing the Club (Diving Duck)

The Ronnie Scott's house band is in safe hands. The pianist James Pearson gives a nod in the direction of Dudley Moore as he blows the roof off the Soho room.

7 Jen Chapin Revisions: Songs of Stevie Wonder (Chesky)

Harry Chapin's daughter puts an audacious jazz-pop spin on Mr Wonder's tunes.

8 Get the Blessing: Bugs in Amber (Cake)

Rock-tinged improv with a smile on its face as the feisty Bristol quartet does its best to upset the jazz police. Mission accomplished.

9 New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Book One (World Village)

Irvin Mayfield's bop-to-blues ensemble waves a defiant fist at Hurricane Katrina and gives Wall Street both barrels with the sardonic cry: "Bail me out, boys."

10 Esbjorn Svensson Trio: Retrospective (Act)

A compilation that forms an ideal introduction for newcomers.

Clive Davis

Classical

1 Jonas Kaufmann: German Arias (Decca)

Kaufmann's darksome, burnished tenor is one of the most versatile voices of the day, and he is extra-special in his native German repertoire. This superlative disc charts his development from patrician Mozartian to budding Wagnerian Heldentenor.

2 Beethoven: Violin Sonatas (Harmonia Mundi)

The young German fiddler Isabelle Faust and the Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov ignite sparks in these strikingly individual performances of Beethoven's 10 sonatas.

3 Puccini: Madama Butterfly (EMI)

Kaufmann again, playing the romantic cad Pinkerton to Angela Gheorghiu's exquisitely delicate Cio-Cio-San. Antonio Pappano conducts the most idiomatic and exciting Butterfly on disc in 40 years.

4 Ravel: Orchestral Works (EMI)

The rapidly ascendant Yannick Nézet-Séguin displays his superfine ear in Daphnis et Chloé Suite 2, Mother Goose, La Valse and Valses nobles et sentimentales.

5 Anja Harteros: Von Ewiger Liebe (Berlin Classics)

The German soprano offers exemplary diction, gorgeous tone and bright-eyed characterisation in this survey of the Lied, from Haydn to Richard Strauss.

6 Anderszewski: Live at Carnegie Hall (Virgin)

The Polish pianist proclaims himself one of the aristocrats of the keyboard in this eclectic recital of Bach (Partita in C minor), Schumann (Faschingsschwank aus Wien), Janacek (In the Mists) and Beethoven (Sonata, Op 110).

7 Haydn: Die Schöpfung (Harmonia Mundi)

Despite an overbusy fortepianist, René Jacobs's Creation sounds freshly conceived. The soloists - Julia Kleiter, Maximilian Schmidt, Johannes Weisser - are superb.

8 Bach Solo: Violin Sonatas & Partitas (Hyperion)

Another staggeringly well-played, freshly conceived account of core repertoire from the brilliant Russian Alina Ibragimova.

9 Purcell: Dido and Aeneas (Chandos)

Sarah Connolly and Gerald Finley are noble sparring partners on this well-sung account of Purcell's only true opera.

10 Shostakovich: Symphonies 5 and 9 (Naxos)

The Petrenko effect on the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is evident in this contrasting pairing of Shostakovich symphonies - an epic, broadly conceived Fifth and a wittily sardonic Ninth.

11 Britten: Before Life and After (Harmonia Mundi)

Mark Padmore is peerless in songs written for Peter Pears among the younger generation of Britten interpreters.

12 Bach: Brandenburg Concertos (Solo Dei Gloria)

John Eliot Gardiner's ever-questing Bachian spirit hovers over these lithe live accounts of Bach's great concerti grossi - here played conductorless, as chamber music.

13 Verdi: Requiem Mass (EMI)

One of the most vividly Italianate accounts of Verdi's great work in recent years. Pappano's Santa Cecilia chorus and orchestra have this music in their blood.

14 Purcell: Ten Sonatas in Four Parts (Linn)

Matthew Halls's Retrospect Trio, comprising former players of the King's Consort, is heard here in stylish accounts of this great baroque chamber music.

15 Bach: Solo Cantatas BWV 35, 169, 170 (Harmonia Mundi)

Bernarda Fink's lustrous mezzo is heard to optimum advantage in the cantatas for solo alto, conceived for boys' voices, but benefiting here from the Argentinian's sensuous timbre and eloquent declamation.

16 Beethoven/Britten: Violin Concertos (Decca)

The violinist Janine Jansen's pairing is one of the most unusual on disc - and she gives electrifying performances.

17 Lava: Opera Arias of the Neapolitan School (DHM)

The flamboyant German baroque diva Simone Kermes outsings Cecilia Bartoli in a sequence of dazzling arias from the golden age of the castrato. The composers (Porpora, Leo, Vinci) may be unfamiliar, but this is a string of show-stopping hits.

18 Rachmaninov: Preludes (Hyperion)

The Scottish pianist Steven Osborne is prized for his forays into later-20th-century repertoire, but his Rachmaninov Preludes rival the finest of recent years.

19 Bellini: I Capuleti e i Montecchi (DG)

Complete operas on disc become rarer and rarer, but they ain't dead yet: Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca blend juicily as Juliet and Romeo in Bellini's adaptation of the pre-Shakespearian Italian source.

20 Brahms: Symphonies 1-4 (EMI)

Simon Rattle confounds his critics with these clear-headed, muscular accounts of core Austro-German repertoire.

Hugh Canning

Contemporary

1 Peter Maxwell Davies: Taverner (NMC)

Taverner is among the most significant operas by a British composer, yet is only now available on disc. The quality of this account makes the wait worthwhile. The intensely challenging score is realised with astonishing smoothness and vigour.

2 Karlheinz Stockhausen: Kontra-Punkte (Wergo)

One of the pioneering masterpieces of the post-war avant-garde, Stockhausen's Kontra-Punkte, for 10 instruments, is played with breathtaking ease and accuracy.

3 Unsuk Chin: Violin Concerto (Analekta)

The Korean composer's 2001 Violin Concerto receives an authoritative first recording alongside her orchestral Rocaná.

4 Elliott Carter: Complete Piano Music (Cedille)

The grand seven-opus sequence includes the four-minute Caténaires, a tour de force of a toccata, dispatched with sparkling precision.

5 Heinz Holliger: Romancendres (ECM)

Holliger reimagines, as "cinder music", Schumann's five Romances for cello and piano, destroyed by his widow, Clara.

6 Wolfgang Rihm: Three works (Kairos)

Sotto voce Notturno and Sotto voce 2 Capriccio, for piano and small orchestra, are like meditations on Mozart's concerto manner, immediately attractive.

7 Michael Zev Gordon: On Memory (NMC)

Twelve short movements exploring a specific relation to music of the past, whether it be Morton Feldman, Chopin or Bill Evans.

8 Britten: Unknown Works (NMC)

Realisations by Colin Matthews, including three Rimbaud settings and the wonderfully strange Untitled Fragment, for strings.

9 Michael Finnissy: Greatest Hits of All Time (Metier)

The title is of that of a Finnissy piece, drawing on Beethoven piano sonatas, Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Mahler's Sixth.

10 Harrison Birtwistle: Orpheus Elegies (Oboe Classics)

Setting Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, Birtwistle casts the mythic poet as an oboist.

Paul Driver

Classical reissues

1 Dinu Lipatti: The Last Concert (Documents)

Soon after giving this wonderful recital, in Besançon in 1950, the 33-year-old Romanian pianist died of leukaemia. Yet the strength of line and of thought, the clarity, the meaningfulness of every note in these performances of Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Chopin are beyond compare.

2 Elgar Symphony No 1, Falstaff (Naxos Historical)

Elgar's 1930 recording of his First Symphony, with the LSO, remains unsurpassed, perhaps even unmatched, in its expressive force and fluidity.

3 Berlioz The Trojans (Testament)

The live 1957 Covent Garden recording, with Blanche Thebom, Amy Shuard and the electrifying Jon Vickers, commemorates the historic moment when Berlioz's greatest work emerged from its century-long eclipse.

4 Wagner Parsifal (ROH)

Reginald Goodall's mastery of pacing Wagner's vast spans comes near faltering in Act I, but the fruit of his slow tempos is the wealth of detail and the space accorded his singers, above all Jon Vickers's passionate, deeply thought account of the title role.

5 Schubert Wanderer Fantasy (Doremi)

Schubert's most virtuoso piano work blazes in the formidable yet tender hands of Sviatoslav Richter in this 1967 recital.

6 Stravinsky: Rite of Spring, Petrushka (Nema)

Brilliant accounts of Stravinsky's four-hand piano transcriptions of his early ballets in this 1984 Nettle and Markham recording.

7 Stravinsky Agon, Apollo, Symphony in Three Movements (BBC Live)

The BBC Symphony Orchestra rise to the challenge of Agon in the vivid live premiere of 1958.

8 Elgar: Nursery Suite (The Elgar Society)

The composer's LSO recording of his charming Nursery Suite is tellingly contrasted with one by a leading modern Elgarian, Mark Elder.

9 The Legendary Amadeus Quartet: Recordings 1951-57 (Brilliant Classics)

The Brahms and Schubert performances are superb, and the Haydn is finely played, if a little lacking in humour.

10 Schumann: Songs (Music & Arts)

Six recordings from the 1930s and 1940s include a lovely Dichterliebe by the Danish tenor Aksel Schiotz, with Gerald Moore.

David Cairns