Brandon's Buzz

Zac Brown Band — “Colder Weather”
(from You Get What You Give) —

In preparation of my annual best-of-year music roundup, I’ve spent the past few days catching up with the handful of records that have slipped through the cracks of my attention. As a proudly gay man with a primary penchant for bucketfuls of angst in his aural entertainment, I know I am hardly in Brown’s general target demographic. But this tune — a devastating survey of a man running like the wind from the frozen ghost (real or perceived) of a woman he loved in another lifetime, and an astonishing anomaly on what is otherwise a fairly upbeat record — quite literally reaches out from the stereo speakers and slaps your soul out of its complacency. A natural successor to “Fire and Rain” (with a soupcon of “Please Come to Boston” tossed in, just for good measure), “Weather” plays like the greatest song James Taylor never had the balls to write. (And it may not sound like it, depending on your particular vantage point, but I absolutely mean that as a compliment!)

names dropped with reckless abandon: James Taylor, Zac Brown Band