It was a good year to be young and bearded. A good decade, really. The aughts kicked off with the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, whose soundtrack opened the eyes of at least one generation to the pleasures of underproduced plucking and simple melodies; and ended with three harbingers of the so-called "indie folk" genre joining hands beneath the unqualified Monsters of Folk moniker, using half-century-old gear to produce a beautiful mess of surf pop, spaghetti westerns, and ethereal lullabies. Confusing!

Anyway, whatever folk is, there was plenty made in 2009 that is worth a listen. Here's my top five, in alphabetical order:

The Avett Brothers, I and Love and You

With the addition of Rick Rubin at the switches and a lot of piano, these North Carolina sibs evolved from a twangy string band to what Ben Folds might have sounded like if he grew up listening to Gram Parsons instead of Elton John. This record might be corny if it weren’t so canny.

Best Tracks: “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise”; “Ten Thousand Words”

2. Blind Pilot, 3 Rounds and a Sound

With Justin Vernon’s sojourn into the wilds of Wisconsin still fresh in the minds of flannel-clad twentysomethings and NPR music critics, you might say Blind Pilot’s Israel Nebeker was under some pressure when he dusted off the dog-eared script of self-exile and absconded to an abandoned cannery to pen the songs that would become 3 Rounds and a Sound. The record isn’t as intense as Vernon’s lauded 2008 opus, but it’s small, intimate, and sneakily spellbinding.

Best Tracks: “One Red Thread”; “3 Rounds and a Sound”

(Update: It has occurred to me that 3 Rounds and a Sound was actually released in 2008, and was included here due to the author's cultural jetlag. The plug stays because the album is awesome... but for the purposes of maintaining a full list, I am obliged to give its spot to Townes, Steve Earle's album of Townes Van Zandt covers. Best tracks: "Lungs"; "To Live is to Fly")

3. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love

To listen to the Decemberists' fantastical folk-rock opera is to observe frontman Colin Meloy in his element: Maidens on horseback and lustful shapeshifters; envious forest queens, murderous drifters; dark magic, tragedy, verbose writing—these are a few of his favorite things.

Best Tracks: “The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)”; “The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All)”; “The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!)”; “The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)”

4. The Felice Brothers, Yonder is the Clock

The Felice Brothers’ first release as members of the Team Love label was slightly more subdued than its self-titled 2009 album, but this posse of backwater yankees still brings the firewater rain on a few tracks. As for the slower stuff, is there any tool more tastefully emo than a well-deployed cello? Yes: a well-deployed accordion.

Best Tracks: “Penn Station”; “Ambulance Man”

5. Monsters of Folk, Monsters of Folk

I sure hoped indie darlings Conor Oberst, M. Ward, and Jim James (Yim Yames?) wouldn’t disappoint with their long-anticipated collaboration. They sure didn’t.

Best Tracks: “Whole Lotta Losin’”; “Temazcal”; “The Sandman, the Brakeman, and Me”

Monsters of Folk might seem like an inappropriate moniker for indie darlings Jim James, M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Oberst collaborator Mike Mogis.

The supergroup kicks off its self-titled debut with a number that might fit more comfortably in the genre of Christian R&B pop: “Sometimes it’s so hard to believe in/But God, I know you have your reasons,” sing James, Ward, and Oberst on “Dear God (sincerely M.O.F.)”

But childlike faith gives way to adolescent rebellion on “Baby Boomer,” teachable strife on “Man Named Truth,” and finally cheerful optimism on “The Sandman, the Brakeman, and Me.”

Throughout, Ward’s steady whisper more or less splits the difference between Oberst’s quavering warble and James’s empyreal crooning—a good blend for three guys with such distinct voices.

The music separates more easily: M. Ward’s fetish for old-timey surf pop rises to the surface on “Whole Lotta Losin’,” while Oberst’s existential, image-dense writing is put front and center on “Temazcal” and “Map of the World,” and James puts on a mellow buzz with “Goodway” and “Magic Marker.”

Lyrically, the album is about becoming OK with the world and yourself. “No split hair’s gonna get me down,” pledges Oberst. “Make way, for whatever will be will be,” advises Ward. “There’s something sweet waiting in the center/Taste and see,” says James, as the others respond in perfect harmony, picking easily at their guitars as Mogis (whose role is mainly track-mixing and strategic Dobro deployment ) pats a benevolent backbeat. The band illustrates this journey toward acceptance in Crayola, and helpfully offers that the trip requires little more than a few joints and a full tank of gas.

It's probably fair to say that Tribute To, the My Morning Jacket singer Jim James Yim Yames' new disc of George Harrison versions, comes off more as a thought experiment than an organically approached extracurricular. That's not a put-down: How many times have you asked, "What if ___ covered ___?" and smiled at the thought? (In my case, I fill in "Panda Bear" and "The Raspberries," but some dreams are just too good to come true.)

It's easy to dwell more on what the six-song EP, out today on ATO (and available for free on MySpace), doesn't cover than what is does. The two Beatles selections amount to probably the best, most haunting song Harrison ever wrote ( "Long, Long, Long") and one of his more interesting ones ( "Love You To"), but they feel too obvious, and far from the most curious potential choices. Why not "Savoy Truffle" or "Only A Northern Song" or "The Inner effing Light?" Why put forward the best (and best known) version of Harrison when you can plumb the late guitarist's more idiosyncratic side?

The solo Harrison numbers are more problematic, if only because all of them — "Behind That Locked Door," "My Sweet Lord," "Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)," and "All Things Must Pass" — come from the same album, Harrison's 1970 pop debut All Things Must Pass. Posterity rightly remembers that three-record behemoth as a Great Rock Album, so the appeal to James is understandable, especially since Harrison never again matched such sprawl and ambition. To ignore, say, the purposeful yet understated Living In The Real World (1974), or Harrison's overproduced self-titled album (1979), or his late-'60s experiments with psychedelia and electronic music (Wonderwall Music and Electronic Sound) probably makes for safe curatorship — just not a particularly interesting tribute. It's no surprise that fans of My Morning Jacket will get much more out of Tribute To than fans of the quiet Beatle.

Yet it's hard to begrudge James for playing (presumably) his favorite songs by one of his (presumably) favorite artists (he recorded the EP in late 2001, not long after Harrison's death at age 58). The alt-country crooner's sorrowful, heavily reverbed voice is a good stand-in for Harrison's often shimmering arrangements, as well as for his music's bittersweetness. That's most evident in "My Sweet Lord," transfigured from celebratory to downright funereal. The cover is all acoustic guitar and somber, multitracked vocals; when James swallows a sob on the fourth word of "I really wanna go with you," it's clear he's singing to Harrison and not the titular deity. James gives most of the EP similar treatment, occasionally tickling songs with a gentle, heavily sustained piano. The result is a sameness that won't demand repeat listens; still, between this EP and James' upcoming Monsters Of Folk record with M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Mike Mogis, it's a good year to be a My Morning Jacket fan.

The EP's outlier, almost (not quite) worth the price of admission, is "Love You To," once a swirling raga. Here it's a far uglier acid trip, less soft transcendence than sardonic menace, in which a banjo slides through each guitar strum like a snake through sand. If the key line in The Beatles' original was "I'll make love to you/If you want me too," here everything almost tilts on "Love me while you can/Before I'm a dead old man" — until you realize James has changed the lyric's second half to "love our fellow man." An old message, and Harrison's most frequent theme, which James manages to find even at his most melancholy.

Photo courtesy of Yim Yames' MySpace page.