The Man In Me by Rodney Crowell. Crowell is a major thinker who uses instrumentation that cause his records to be filed in the country category. The lyrics are a ruthless and eloquent self-examination/dressing down and a guitar riff straight out of Duane Eddy fills in the blanks.

Re-Ron, by Gil Scott-Heron. Rewind to when rappers placed a premium on urgency and literacy, and dealt with matters far more noble than misogyny and the Benjamins. Someone very close to me mixed the record.

Handlebars by Flobots. The first 30 seconds provoked the question “what is this crap?” but by the end I knew it was anything but. Hi IQ and social consciousness that captures the complexity of day to day existence in 2008 meets infectious production.

Hate Me by Blue October. More brutal self-examination and confession that makes the spate of current books by addicts sharing war stories seem like child’s play. First time I heard it I had to pull off a highway because I had never been faced with anything that riveting framed so well, and I couldn’t handle the wheel and listen at the same time. And I’m not half bad at multi-tasking.