Kenny Chesney, 36, is country’s reigning Entertainer of the Year, the standard-bearer of mainstream Nashville. He has been sharpening his music for years, and his penetrating tenth album contents itself with none of the handy country topics — no tear-stained songs about love or trucks, no half-cocked politics, no glistening fried chicken.

The basis of these dozen songs is simple: Man longs to exchange the stress of daily life for the serenities of the beach — tremendously, seriously, desperately longs. Yet the tone of these literate tunes remains as light as Chesney’s singing of them stays soulful. The suite begins with “Old Blue Chair” — a rocker that sits rotting on the Caribbean sand, the seat of his fond memories of busted love, hangovers and afternoons spent reading Hemingway.

The title tune is about the wisdom of accepting yourself, whether “a tourist, a beach bum or a star.” And Chesney celebrates a pal who sustains himself as an “Island Boy,” where “stress is the enemy.”

In the middle, he sings three tunes — the quasi-mystical “Somewhere in the Sun,” the effortlessly narrative “Boston,” the dry-wet “Something Sexy About the Rain” — so intense that he follows with “French Kissing Life” and “Key Lime Pie,” rife with silliness and risqué lines.

In the ’80s, Randy Travis signaled that a country singer could exhale the tradition of George Jones while driving a brand-new Lexus. In the ’90s, Garth Brooks insisted that a country singer could jump like Aerosmith. Now, Chesney advances the argument. Country singers, he insists, can discuss anything, even locations beyond the Deep South. They love the farm. But that doesn’t mean they have to stay on it.

DOWNLOAD: “She Came From Boston,” “Soul of a Sailor”