For those who didn't die of suspense, here are the very best albums of 2009. 10. Dailey & Vincent – Brothers from Different Mothers There's harmony and then there's harmony. As the title of their sophomore set suggests, Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent have voices seemingly made to fit together, and the arrival of another great album so soon after their 2008 debut suggests that they've only just begun to reveal the full extent of their gifts to us. 9. Miranda Lambert - … [Read more...]

My apologies for adding to the deluge of year-end lists, but here are the country albums I've enjoyed most in 2009. In keeping with the guidelines in my Transparent Suspense-Building Ploys for Bloggers handbook, I'll do numbers 20 through 11 today and have you come back for the top 10 tomorrow, if you don't die of anticipation first. 20. George Strait – Twang Not the best Strait album (not even the best recent Strait album), but a special one in his catalog for the twists introduced … [Read more...]

I guess it's no secret that Country Universe and The 9513 have been running simultaneous Best Country Albums of the Decade countdowns, which both wrapped up yesterday. While you might reasonably expect a bit of bias on my part, I honestly think anyone who followed only one of the countdowns missed half the fun, which came from seeing the overlaps and differences in the two lists reveal themselves day by day. With the appearance of each new album, you'd wonder if it had been ranked higher or … [Read more...]

Well, I hope you're happy, country fans. Kenny Chesney was so incensed to learn that some people record grainy video snippets of his concerts on their cellphones and digital still cameras that confiscating one fan's memory card did little to quell his fury: now he's taking his whole show off the road next year. Try to get your shaky handheld footage of a tiny bald speck performing an almost inaudible song (just a pounding bassline, really) now. It'll be dang near impossible with Chesney floating … [Read more...]

Disclaimer: This is more about music technology than actual music, so it might be boring to a lot of people (or everyone). I've subscribed to Emusic for a number of years and credit the service with turning me into a regular downloader. Their indie focus and reasonable pricing structure won me over. For $25 per month, I could get 100 song download credits to use as I saw fit; for the cost of about two CDs, I could download about eight digital albums in restriction-free MP3 format. That was … [Read more...]