Still the finest album of 2007 thus far

Perhaps Damon Albarn was the new Lennon all along and we just never gave him his dues. Scathing, insightful, dreamy and melodically skillful; Albarn is easily one of the greatest writers of popular music of the last fifteen years.

Something of a complicated man, Albarn has managed to convey his wide range of moods successfully to a large audience through numerous recordings by both Blur and Gorillaz, and, the odd lapse of taste and judgment aside, he's built up a rather formidable body of work.

This, his latest adventure, sees the man in collaboration with former Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Afrobeat rhythmic legend Tony Allen and Simon Tong who previously played in The Verve and toured with the Coxon-less Blur on their round of dates for last album Think Tank.

The Good, the Bad and the Queen is Albarn's most adult collection of songs in his career so far. Reflective, resigned, troubled, world-weary, cynical and old-fashioned, this is an album about London atmospherically redolent of those strangely comforting old Christmas cards depicting a foggy, melancholic Victorian city where people have all but shut themselves away for the night to escape the howling wind and the brass monkeys outside. The songs are affecting, haunting, tuneful and perfect for an autumnal 7 O' clock gloom. It's bloody miserable, and I bloody love it.

Amongst Simonon's dubby basslines, Allen's percussive virtuosity and Tong's eerie string plucking, Albarn's voice is the ghost of our past and future singing over a piano in an old man's pub in a part of town that still has air raid shelters in many of its back gardens.

Each member brings his own element to the sound. Together they sound like a great band. I hope this is not the beginning and the end of their union (the reliable word says it isn't).

In case my language was misleading, I'm not trying to say this isn't a thoroughly contemporary piece of work too; produced by Danger Mouse there's much in this recording that's benefited from the modern studio environment and a cross-cultural influence. It just has a more traditional kind of old school dust sitting upon the desks.