Is it just me or has there been lots of new albums released this year? I haven’t made a constant effort to track everything down, but I can say I’ve been more alert than usual due to running the music blog. Considering artists you don’t know that well, new releases don’t make that much difference since there are many songs on the their previous albums new to you as well.

My recent favorite has been the week-old Pearl Jam album Backspacer. Other interesting recent releases include Draw the Line by David Gray and Mason Jennings’ Blood of Man. This biggest new album for me this year was – hands down – Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King by Dave Matthews Band, followed by seeing this incredible live band twice after the album was released. The coolest new artist this year was Zee Avi with her self-titled debut album.

Keeping up with new album releases and show announcements is a tricky business. If you have any tips to share, feel free to comment. I know there are some websites that are supposed to track these for their users, so I’d be interested to hear if any of them works out for you. On Wikipedia, there’s a list of albums released in 2009, and Metacritic has a list of upcoming releases. But these list are always incomplete while containing so much stuff that it’s easy to miss the interesting ones.

Personally, the upcoming album that I’m most looking forward to, is Battle Studies by John Mayer, due to release on November 17. Then there are two live albums that are now in pre-order, En Concert by Jack Johnson and Beautiful Mess –Live on Earth by Jason Mraz. Here’s the first single off the new John Mayer album, it’s called Who Says.