This is shaping up to be an absolutely great year in music, at least in my opinion. Many of my favorite performers have new releases slated for 2009. Springsteen’s Working on a Dream was released last month and after a dozen listens, it looks to settle in as my favorite Springsteen album ever. As far back as last summer, I was getting stoked about the news that The Avett Brothers would record their next full-length LP with uber-producer Rick Rubin at the helm. That album should be out sometime this summer. My buddy Scott has often bemoaned the fact that Michael McDermott isn’t a household name. I agree. The greatest singer-songwriter of our generation is set to release a new album later this summer as well. His last album, Noise From Words, garnered the top spot in my annual Album of the Year post back in 2007.

Next week, a little band from Dublin called U2 releases their 13th studio album. I’ve been a U2 fan for as long as I can remember. Their last two albums, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and All That You Can’t Leave Behind, are some of my all-time favorites. The Joshua Tree is probably in my Top 5. No Line on the Horizon has been billed as something of a departure from the “classic” U2 sound mined on the aforementioned albums. Instead, No Line may bear more in common with U2’s experimental albums of the 1990s, Achtung Baby and Zooropa. You can listen for yourself by visiting the band’s MySpace page where you can stream the entire album for free. A quick note: you have to click the album art in the left bar of the music player to pull up all of the tracks. I just finished listening to it and I loved it. My favorite track initially is “Moment of Surrender”, a track that, according to Bono, is to this record what “One” was to Achtung Baby, the emotional center of a creative and risky album.