Keith Urban, March 18 at Ryman Auditorium In the midst of a three-night Ryman stand that sold out in record time, Urban performed with all the adrenalized joy of a man whose wildest fantasies had finally come true. But it was also entertaining to watch a 90 percent female audience who came to sing along with the hits and scream lusty affirmation get a six-string clinic that wouldn’t be out of place on the fret-fanatic G3 tour. If a decade from now mainstream country is populated by a legion of 28-year-old female guitar goddesses, we’ll know why. Guitar Wolf/Electric Eel Shock, March 24 at Exit/In The city goes for more than a decade without a single Japanese band playing here, and somehow three converge on Elliston Place on the same night. At The End, DMBQ flaunted faces smeared with blood and crowd-surfed their petite drummer and her kit to the back of the room—but that wasn’t enough to trump J-punk heroes Guitar Wolf and their scene-stealing opening act Electric Eel Shock at the Exit/In. The Eels made nonstop devil horns, thrashed their Afros and bounced around the stage like SuperBalls; the only way Guitar Wolf could top them was for angry bassist Billy Wolf to hurl his mic stand into the crowd, destroy its replacement, then smash his instrument to toothpicks in a show-closing fit. A week later, he died of a heart attack. Fiery Furnaces, April 16 at Exit/In If their album Blueberry Boat was an expansive travelogue across continents and centuries, Matt and Eleanor Friedberger’s set at Exit/In was a warp-speed slideshow in 3D. As soon as they took the stage, they proceeded to slice and dice their entire catalog into one long, scrambled mashup, without stopping, for 45 minutes. It was completely insane, and people actually looked like they were loving it—although it might have had something to do with Eleanor’s passing resemblance to Phoebe Cates. Garbage, May 6 at Ryman Auditorium Lead singer Shirley Manson admitted to nervousness about returning to Nashville after throwing a temper tantrum during a River Stages concert five years ago. But all her fears dropped away, as Manson and her band put on a ferociously visceral 90-minutes that found the Scottish singer at her most charismatic and effective. The Ryman’s responsive crowd clearly touched and inspired the band, with Manson smiling often and relating to fans more intimately than usual. Lightning Bolt, May 9 at Angle of View The Providence, R.I., duo’s tornado of danceable noise set off one of the fiercest mosh pits Nashville’s seen in years—while demonstrating that the local audience for noise is bigger than most club bookers realize, given the right act. The Decemberists, May 13 at Exit/In Maybe the year’s most unexpectedly awesome rock show, from a group that sometimes comes off wispy and precious on record. At the Exit/In, the large Portland band delivered their sea-shanty pastiches and lush, hyper-literate folk-pop like Belle & Sebastian with descended testicles. Bonus points for getting the entire crowd to sit on the E/I’s unspeakable floor—for “Hava Negila,” no less. Robert Plant, June 29 at Ryman Auditorium Plant seems to empathize with the affection that even the most committed fan of his adventurous solo work holds for the well-worn catalog of Led Zeppelin. So he struck a suitable compromise, creatively rejiggering arrangements of Zep classics while throwing in liberal doses of his recent (and aptly titled) Mighty Rearranger—then kicking nostalgia’s wrinkled ass with a combustible “Whole Lotta Love” designed to send the young’uns back for schooling. Sleater-Kinney, July 2 at Cannery Ballroom Led Zeppelin who? Armed with a new album’s worth of thunderous guitar-rock riffs, one of the world’s last great rock bands proved beyond doubt—especially to those who saw their tetchy Nashville gig a few years back—that they’re one of the world’s last great rock bands. Green Day, Aug. 15 at Gaylord Entertainment Center Love them or hate them, Green Day are officially a stadium-sized rock band after 17 years. At the GEC show this year, we were bombarded with hits as Billie Joe worked the crowd into a call-and-response frenzy. Despite a decent-sized adult turnout, the group even formed a makeshift band onstage, à la School of Rock, taking only tweens from the audience—proof that the band still play for the kids. Neil Young, Aug. 19 at Ryman Auditorium Sure, Bob Dylan’s had some fine moments in the last few years, but no musician who broke out in the ’60s has aged as gracefully, and been as consistently engaging, as Neil Young. Despite the large (30 or so) rotating cast of performers, and the distractions of Jonathan Demme’s mammoth film crew (the show was shot for a live DVD), Young’s performance was a masterpiece of simple elegance, revelatory in its understated beauty. Bittersweet or not, growing old never looked so good. Sufjan Stevens, Sept. 23 at Cannery Ballroom Recalling both the cinematic sweep of Aaron Copland and the hypnotic transcendence of Philip Glass, Stevens wowed the capacity crowd with his imaginative (and refreshingly nonjudgmental) tour through Middle America, complete with cheerleaders, team uniforms, historical references and cultural landmarks. In Stevens’ case, detachment isn’t a liability, since it’s in the service of insight rather than irony. The Posies, Sept. 23 at Exit/In After 19 years of playing indelibly catchy songs, Ken Auer and Jon Stringfellow might have been a bit disappointed when only about a hundred folks could be bothered to see their reunion tour’s Nashville stop. Still, they cranked through their semi- and sorta- and somewhat-hits with brio, and rewarded the true believers who did turn up by inviting two dozen of them to sit onstage for much of the show—call it power-populism. Wolf Colonel, Oct. 13, in front of a house on Vine Ridge Drive As midnight approached on a foggy Nashville night, Jason Anderson, a.k.a. Wolf Colonel, stood on a lawn with his guitar, encircled by about 30 people. As he led a sing-along in which he gently yelped instructions before each new permutation of the chorus (e.g., “up high this time, like Coldplay”), he strummed, hopped, smiled and spun, exhorting his new entourage to sing louder and with more abandon, until finally shouting, “Let’s get the cops called on us!” As Anderson says on his website, there was an emphasis “on feeling awesome.” Cat Power, Oct. 17 at Mercy Lounge After cautionary tales about Chan Marshall’s air of awkward unpredictability onstage, it was nice to see her for the first time and have her play a set all the way through. It’s not for everyone; the hushed vibe cast a palpable listlessness over the sizable audience, who seemed ready for an early exit. But Marshall brought staying power and a positively heavenly voice, so all resistance proved futile. Chris Crofton & the Alcohol Stuntband, Nov. 11 at The Basement Crofton may have a sense of irony about his scuzzy beer-sucking self, but as he proved at The Basement, his love of heavy metal and John Denver is straight up. How can that produce anything but disaster? Bellow yourself hoarse on the ballads, save your funniest, filthiest punch lines for the rockers, and play every song like someone’s about to pull the plug on your life.