Music Row, hit by so many things in recent years, was smacked by time warp in this one. And nobody bitched.

O Brother, Where Art Thou the CD (as opposed to O Brother, Where Art Thou the movie) brought Depression-era sounds back to a Row whose movers and shakers hadn’t thought about them at least since the Nixon Administration. Two years ago, the Dixie Chicks retrieved the banjo from beyond the pale of radio taste (a dubious phrase steeped in the oxymoronic), and this year the mythic Soggy Bottom Boys threatened to do the same with other similarly un-messed-with sounds. Then came Sept. 11, and with it the flood of musical patriotism that pushed Old Glory, once a staple of Nashville music, past arbiters of cool for the first time in decades.

A measure of normality was returned only near the end of the year with the issuance of Garth Brooks’ Scarecrow, which, despite Garth’s usual headline-hunting, was widely accepted as his finest effort since the days of “The Dance” and “Friends in Low Places.”

Between the rise of O Brother and the re-advent of Garth, there were other indications that someday at least some of the Row’s shuttered doors will have the wherewithal to reopen. With Alright Guy, his fourth CD, Gary Allan strengthened his position in the front rank of newer mainstream voices, while Patty Loveless underscored the year’s O Brother direction with her stark Mountain Soul.

As always, of course, excellent stuff was done outside the mainstream. This highly individual list of the year’s 10 best CDs illustrates the country-oriented diversity of Music City.

1. Various artists, Down From the Mountain (Lost Highway) This, the Ryman-recorded live album featuring some artists and some music (and some not) from the O Brother soundtrack, offers the extra dimension of a wowed crowd and the resultant artistic rush. Opening with the Fairfield Four’s deep, a cappella “Po’ Lazarus” and the mock gaiety of the late John Hartford’s “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” the CD rips into high gear with Dan Tyminski’s near-maniacal “Wild Bill Jones” and then Tyminski’s lead and Alison Krauss’ chill-bumpy harmony on “Blue and Lonesome.” These are followed by the Cox Family’s “I Am Weary (Let Me Rest)” and “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown,” both featuring Suzanne Cox’s wondrously tearful throat. Then come the antique-ish lullaby “Dear Someone” and the yearning “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll,” both by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. All this and the rest of the concert wring from the audience the kind of cheers that are hard to fake even with today’s technology.

2. Garth Brooks, Scarecrow (Capitol) If you care to know what Garth was up to during his latest not always lamented quiescence, this was obviously it: a mainstream masterpiece offering touches of everything from hard-country and bluegrass to big ballads to delicious swing, soul and Celtic music, infused throughout with a mix of sexy humor and altar-call seriousness. Sometimes employing strings and other times stark sparseness, he delivers it all with a winning, backing-off self-assurance born (one suspects) of the fact that he finally (surely) has nothing left to prove. So what gets proved here, as on the two albums predating the gargantuan manifestation of his commercial possibilities, is his undeniable (deal with it) artistic genius.

3. Kate Campbell, Wandering Strange (Eminent) Here, in answer to years of requests, the folkish-singing daughter of a Southern Baptist minister returns to some of the music of her youth, adding a few newly written samples of her own. In a spellbinding voice unalloyed by tricks, Campbell sings age-old hymns (“Come Thou Fount,” “There Is a Fountain,” “Jordan’s Stormy Banks,” etc.) with a reverence capable of filling the faithful with awe and doubters with pause over their condition. And three Campbell originals stand out, each in its own way: “10,000 Lures” profiles sin’s ubiquitous magnetism, “Bear It Away” recalls the sacrilege of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four little African American girls, and “The Last Song” imagines Jesus’ final night of freedom. This non-doctrinaire CD fits no category, certainly not straight gospel, but it comes as close to country (at least to country’s traditional preoccupations) as to anything else. And it is flat-out haunting.

4. Gary Allan, Alright Guy (MCA) Gary Allan has the brains to make some music that can get past the radio consultants and the guts to make some that flies in their faces—and even the part that gets by often slips in a thought or phrase likely to complicate their consulting. Here, on his defining effort to date, he offers the Todd Snider-penned title song, which confesses to perusing “pictures of Madonna naked.” As a closer, he provides Bruce Robison’s wickedly funny mock-religious allegory “What Would Willie Do.” Taken in toto, this revives the spirit of California country from the era of Merle and Buck, when records (and radio) were focused more on entertaining listeners than on pacifying consultants.

5. Patty Loveless, Mountain Soul (Sony) Country music’s contemporary coal miner’s daughter is known for a voice full of the commodity for which this package was titled. That voice is chillingly suited for the lyrical fare to be found here, a musical recounting of the rare delights and dark and lonesome secrets of the grinding hill-country existence. Within its back-country purview, this 14-track CD is diverse, offering old and new songs of varied styles, but the overall mood is summed up in a chilling, epic coal-mining anthem: “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”

6. Gail Davies & Friends, Live & Unplugged at the Station Inn (Little Chickadee) This is a live album that doesn’t make you wish you had been there; it takes you there. And the unpretentious virtuosity of Davies and her stagemates is so impeccable that you often find yourself wondering if it was done live at all. The star of the show, one of Nashville feminism’s staunchest pioneers, also remains one of its most evocative voices.

7. Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Room With a View (Arista) With impressive vocals and writing skills, newcomer Johnson offers an album front-loaded with radio stuff but not without some of the most impressive, soulful work to be encountered in the mainstream this year. Nashville needs more like her.

8. Chris Knight, A Pretty Good Guy (Dualtone) After a striking first album on Decca that was a major-label fluke (far too high-octane for radio’s gatekeepers), the rebel from Slaughters, Ky., refuses to back up on this one for Dualtone. It’s a characteristic slice of real life.

9. Brooks & Dunn, Steers & Stripes (Arista) B&D, who fuel all three rings of their stage circus with B’s (offstage) quiet thoughtfulness and D’s headlong vocals, here proffer their decade-long career’s best.

10. Leslie Satcher, Love Letters (Warner Bros.) Satcher is possibly the realest woman on Music Row, having written jump-out-at-you songs for other people’s CDs before taking her own turn here. Her pen and throat reflect such authenticity that some may wonder how they got onto a major label. Fortunately, unbelievers, it still happens.