7. The Black KeysAttack & Release

I’d loved the previous albums but then Attack & Release came out and they’d worked with Danger Mouse, who is one of my favourite producers and was doing great stuff around then with Gorillaz and Martina Topley-Bird, and he’d done The Grey Album thing too, and I think Gnarls Barkley came just after this. Quite an unusual choice of producer for them, because they’d been doing quite hard stuff before that. Not rock rock, but y’know. It was just an amazing blend. Danger Mouse has got a real swing to the stuff he does, and he’d put a surrounding swing to it, combining two quite raw musicians – and an amazing vocalist – and it’s just this incredible album. I’ve seen them a couple of times – and I think I built my expectation of them up too much – I mean, they were amazing, but I think I was expecting it to be the pinnacle of all gigs.