Brandon's Buzz

All kinds of musical blasts from the past are on tap this week as August draws to a close. Nothing much earth-shattering here, but there is quite a bit to have fun with here. Take a look:

 

They may not hold sway on the charts and at pop radio the way they once did in their respective heydays — the late ’80s for the ladies, with unforgettable smashes like their 1987 classic “Alone” and their turn-of-the-decade touchstone “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You,” and the late ’90s for the guys, with their twin triumphs from 1998, “Iris” and “Slide” — but they are responsible for some of the most-loved music of all time, and this week, the Wilson sisters — you know ‘em better as Heart — and Johnny Rzeznik and his Goo Goo Dolls each return this week from extended hiatuses with hot new recordings. Heart is back with Red Velvet Car, their first album since 2004′s Jupiter’s Darling, and the tender lead single “Hey You” is already getting a surprisingly warm reception at adult contemporary radio. Meanwhile, aside from a terrific pair of hits collections, we’ve heard nary a peep from Rzeznik and his band since their 2006 effort Let Love In, but the Dolls are back on the playground with their ninth album, Something for the Rest of Us, and early word has it that the record is a tight, typically polished collection of tunes designed to keep their fans — a group in which I proudly include myself — happy and hungry for more.

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The wind cries Katy this week, and urrybody figured out a while ago that whomever tried to stand in Miss Perry’s way was gonna get steamrolled. Hence, it’s hardly a pulse-pounder on the new release wall this week. A quick look at the highlights:

• Proving definitively that there’s no such thing as bad press, former American Idol winner Fantasia — fresh off a half-hearted suicide attempt in the wake of adultery allegations — steps up with her third album, Back to Me, which includes the Ryan Tedder-penned
  “Even Angels,” a one-off single from earlier this year.

 

• Christian superstar Natalie Grant is aiming to touch off a
  Love Revolution with her latest disc.

 

• Usher bookends his latest release Raymond vs. Raymond with
  a collection of remixes and b-sides, Versus, which includes guest appearances from Pitbull, Justin Bieber, and Jay-Z.

 

• David Guetta adds four bonus tracks — including new collaborations with Fergie, Madonna, and Kelis — to his smash 2009 album and renames it One Love 2010.

 

• Warner Brothers inaugurates a new series of budget-priced
  best-of sets entitled Top Ten with hits collections from Clay Walker
  and Sixpence None the Richer. (Look for upcoming titles in the series from the likes of Travis Tritt, Dwight Yoakam, and Randy Travis.)

 

• Genre-busting country band Little Big Town return with their
  fourth studio album, The Reason Why.
• The motion picture soundtrack for Drew Barrymore’s upcoming romantic comedy Going the Distance features classic tracks from The Cure and The Pretenders, as well as new tunes from Boxer Rebellion and
  The Airborne Toxic Event.

 

• And finally, the one and only Katy Perry follows up her massive 2008 breakthrough with what promises to be an even bigger retail behemoth, Teenage Dream. The lead single “California Gurls” was juvenile, ridiculous, and catchy as all hell — translation: the perfect summer smash — and the title track is rocketing up the charts right behind it, so buckle in and be prepared for Perry to be inescapable once again.

After a handful of bum weeks, the new release wall is cookin’ with gas this Tuesday, as pop music’s two strongest songwriters — who, quelle coinky-dink, just happen to be touring together this summer — face off against each other with thrilling new projects. ‘Bout damn time:

Handling the production reins for the first time, the peerless Ray LaMontagne reaches for a looser, more organic groove on his fourth studio album, God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise, out this week. Recorded with his backing band, now coined The Pariah Dogs, Rise continues LaMontagne’s breathtaking knack for crafting quality folk music with a sumptuous modern edge, and he even proclaimed to USA Today last week that these new tunes are among the best songs he has ever written. Pretty bold proclamation, that. (If you’re in the mood for a bit more of the magnificent LaMontagne, you should check out “Do U Wanna” — a buzzworthy track from Mike Posner‘s much-discussed debut album, 31 Minutes to Takeoff — which is built around a frisky sample from LaMontagne’s yearning “You Are the Best Thing.”)

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It’s another slow one out there, kids, as the great new release famine of August 2010 rolls on. Fear not — relief arrives next week in the estimable forms of David Gray and Ray LaMontagne, so until then, bide your time with these titles:

• The ever-ambitious Blake Shelton delivers the second leg of a planned trilogy of EPs this week with the release of All About Tonight,
  a six-track collection of tunes which includes “Draggin’ the River,”
  a bizarro duet with his beloved, that surly spitfire Miranda Lambert.

 

• Just ahead of the film’s arrival in theaters nationwide this weekend
  drops the motion picture soundtrack for Julia Roberts’ much-anticipated Eat, Pray, Love, which includes a brand new single from Pearl Jam’s frontman Eddie Vedder, as well as previously released material from Josh Rouse, Neil Young, and Marvin Gaye.

 

• This has apparently been out since freakin’ May, but I only stumbled across the original television soundtrack Friday Night Lights, Vol. 2 just last week (and quite by accident, at that). Nevertheless, this is a must-own, with tracks from Augustana, Jakob Dylan, and The Avett Brothers, as well as — at long last — W.G. Snuffy Walden’s gorgeous theme song, about which I waxed eloquent here last weekend.

 

• Finally, head on down to your local Wal-Mart store this week, where five bucks’ll get you Self Loves Lilith 2010, a miniature version of Self magazine (with Sugarland’s glorious goddess Jennifer Nettles gracing the cover!) which comes bundled with a fifteen-track CD containing music from such Lilith Fair participants as Suzanne Vega, Grace Potter, A Fine Frenzy, Lights, and (duh!) Sarah McLachlan. (Give this one spin, and then I dare you to tell me it’s not ten times more satisfying than the so-called “official” Lilith companion disc that was released last month!)

Nothing major out there this week as August arrives in earnest, but a couple of midlist sleepers pop up on the new release wall, and the artists behind them are absolutely the real deal. Dig in:

• A’ll be pleased as punch to learn that his current heroine Lady GaGa is back this week with The Remix, a collection of ten extended dance and club mixes of her hit singles.

 

• Indie rock icons Arcade Fire return with their latest, The Suburbs.

 

• Still talkin’ to angels: two decades past the release of their mega-platinum debut, The Black Crowes are back with Croweology,
  a double-length acoustic celebration of their survival.

 

• One of my all-time favorite foreign chicks is the delightfully odd
  Katie Melua, who takes a bit of a left turn this week, teaming up with Madonna’s old crony William Orbit for her fourth album, The House.

 

• I find him whiny, shallow, and painfully pretentious, but his music obviously strikes a chord with someone, and for that person, John Vesely — who records under the name of Secondhand Serenade — offers up his latest effort, Hear Me Now.

 

• And finally: he first gained national attention in 2006 as one of the contestants in CBS’ ill-fated Idol knockoff Rock Star: INXS, which
  sought to find a new lead singer for the venerable Australian band.
  (The time-stopping cover of R.E.M.’s classic smash “Losing My Religion” that he crafted for the series remains one of the most chilling and compelling pieces of television that I have ever witnessed.) Now, four years later, the blisteringly brilliant Ryan Star steps into the spotlight as a true recording artist with his hotly-anticipated major label debut 11:59.

Slim pickin’s on the new release wall this week, there’s no two ways around it. Let’s be careful out there:

• The legendary Tom Jones returns to his gospel roots
  on his latest record, Praise and Blame.

 

• Recording under the moniker of Owl City, a kid called Adam Young created a sensation at pop radio earlier in the year with his monster left-field smash “Fireflies,” and while we patiently await the next OC record, Young satiates our burning curiosity in the meantime with
  An Airplane Carried Me to Bed, a collection of tunes he composed and recorded four years ago under the name of Sky Sailing.

 

• That woeful fool Clay Aiken supplements his latest covers record
  with a companion DVD entitled Tried and True Live!.

 

• The fabulous Natalie Merchant pops up this week
  with an exclusive session, which features an
  amazing acoustic reading of her 1998 hit “Break Your Heart,”
  as well as a fun rendition of The Wizard of Oz‘s classic standard
  “If I Only Had a Brain.”

 

• Finally, my single favorite pop culture wordsmith ever — Rolling Stone‘s blisteringly brilliant music critic Rob Sheffield — follows up his shattering 2008 memoir Love is a Mix Tape with a hilarious new chronicle of having spent his adolescence selling his soul to FM radio, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest
  for True Love and a Cooler Haircut.

July closes on a low-key note, but one of the Buzz’s favorite gals is back with a deeply personal new album, and that alone is cause for celebration. Take a look:

She went on a political rampage on her last album, 2008′s painfully uneven Detours, but for her seventh studio set, 100 Miles from Memphis, the staggeringly talented Sheryl Crow pulls it back toward the personal by paying tribute to the Tennessee soul that so permeated the music of her youth. The cameos here are impressive: The Rolling Stones’ legendary guitarist Keith Richards lends a few licks to the album track “Eye to Eye,” and Memphis native son Justin Timberlake helps Crow deliver a genre-busting cover of Terence Trent D’arby’s forgotten 1988 smash “Sign Your Name.” Crow closes the album with a mellow, must-hear take on The Jackson 5′s classic touchstone “I Want You Back,” which stands as moving and as powerful a tribute to Michael’s legacy as any other I could conjure.

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Another slow-ish week on tap, although one of the true seminal recordings of the ’90s returns to print in a triumphant new deluxe edition re-release, and that’s more than enough cause for celebration. Behold:

Never one to shy away from his own ambitious nature, the legendary Sting returns this week with Symphonicities, a gorgeous new record of orchestral reworkings of some of his best-loved recordings. To his credit, he largely shies away from the iconic hits — at very least, give the man credit for seemingly being smart enough to understand that he managed to nail tunes like “Every Breath You Take” and “Fields of Gold” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger” the first time, and that there was no need to mess with perfection — in favor of deeper album cuts, but if it has been a while since you’ve given “Roxanne” or “Englishman in New York” your full attention, this record may just be up your alley.

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July enters with a bit of a whimper, but in the wake of the wallet-buster that was June’s stunningly stocked music slate, I’m good with taking a breather this week. Don’t fall completely asleep at the wheel, though; there are a couple of titles that require your attention today, and they are as follows:

Once upon a time, a remarkable artist by the name of Alex Band was the brains and the brawn behind a now-defunct pop band name of
The Calling. The band got their big break in the summer of 2000 with a cameo appearance in the smash film Coyote Ugly, in which they performed the song that would become their signature classic, “Wherever You Will Go.” The heart-tugging tune exploded at radio in the immediate wake of 9/11, and it seemed as though The Calling was on their way to glory, but record company troubles and a crippling case of band infighting punched holes in the ship, and they parted ways after their highly-touted 2004 sophomore disc failed wholly to launch. Band has laid low for the past few years, but he’s back at the plate this week with his hot solo debut, We’ve All Been There, and I’m thrilled to announce that I am taping a conversation with Band this week, for airing later this month on Brandon’s Buzz Radio, in which we’re going to discuss all of this and so much more.

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If this website’s statistics are correct — and I have no reason to believe they aren’t, though I’ll confess I haven’t independently verified to be true what follows — then you are currently reading the Buzz’s one hundredth record store report. It’s very difficult to comprehend that I’ve written a hundred of these already, but they say time flies when you’re having fun, alas. Check out who’s helping us pass the century mark this week:

For their latest project, the brand new double-disc set Staring Down the Brilliant Dream, those marvelous mavericks Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — better known as the Indigo Girls — have combed through the recordings of all their live shows from the past four years and compiled a collection of thirty-one of their favorite performances and moments. A handful of Indigo classics — “Closer to Fine” and “Shame On You,” among them — are included, although the gals largely (and admirably) choose to bypass the obvious hits and dig deeper into their discography to fill out this album. The results, at times, are plainly electrifying: “Moment of Forgiveness” (a gem from their overlooked 2002 record Become You) shines as a stripped-down acoustic ballad; newer staples like “Get Out the Map” and “Kid Fears” remain fabulous; and the brilliant Brandi Carlile considerably livens up a cover of
Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

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Another jam-packed week on tap at your local record store, as two of music’s brightest talents return with much-anticipated new projects. Too bad only one of same manages to soar:

As part of a duo with his twin brother Evan, he scored a pleasantly melodic radio hit called “Crazy for This Girl” in late 2000, but despite a keen sense of his abilities as a vocalist and a couple of strong records, it seemed as though long-term commercial success in the music business was just not in the cards for Jaron Lowenstein. But not so fast: using the moniker Jaron and the Long Road to Love, Lowenstein is back in the game this week with
Getting Dressed in the Dark, his debut album as a solo act. The first single “Pray for You” — a hilarious kiss-off dedicated to a gal who clearly done this boy ten kinds of wrong — is a burgeoning smash at country radio, and, if his Facebook updates are any accurate indication, Jaron sure is a charmer. This could be a sleeper hit of the highest order.

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An insanely busy workweek has come and gone, and I am now charged with composing the longest record store report in Brandon’s Buzz history. Luckily for verbose ol’ me, I feel that I am equal to this challenge. To wit:

 

Those canny folks at Now! are back on the block with a pair of new singles collections, as
Now That’s What I Call Music! 34 compiles a cross-section of recent radio smashes from the likes of, among others, red-hot Lady Antebellum (the wistful “American Honey”), OneRepublic (“All the Right Moves,” so deliciously epic), The Script (“Breakeven,” a worthy breakthrough for this terrific and too-long-ignored band), and Miranda Lambert (the tremendously moving “The House That Built Me,” the most played song at country radio this week); and the crassly manipulative Now That’s What I Call the USA! pulls together a handful of so-called patriotic country tunes, some of which absolutely fit the mold (Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” say, or Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Some Gave All”), and others of which are, for this occasion, only marginally appropriate at best (fine though they certainly are, Eric Church’s “Guys Like Me” and Rascal Flatts’ “Fast Cars and Freedom” don’t exactly fill me with the urge to salute the nearest flag, if you know what I mean). Being, however, from the same group of people who, a few months ago, seemed to believe that The Fray’s incendiary “You Found Me” actually glorifies (as opposed to excoriates) God, I s’pose this scattershot set is right on par.

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One of Sherry Ann’s harem of future husbands helps to kick off June in inimitable style, and had I been using my noodle last weekend, I would have commissioned her to compose the text celebrating that event. Instead, you’re stuck with me, and I s’pose I’ll leave it to you to discern whether or not that’s a good thing:

Give Clay Aiken this much credit: he certainly never backs down from a challenge. Despite several moments of genuine brilliance — laugh if you must, but “Invisible” and “Run to Me” (the standout tracks from his middling 2003 debut Measure of a Man) are both terrific tunes — Daddy Clive’s quest to turn Aiken into the next great pop star was a wholesale failure, and the attempt to refashion him as a baby Barry — replete with Manilow’s maddening penchant for godawfully inappropriate remakes! — fared even worse. And yet, through it all, Aiken has rolled with the punches, displaying an admirable grit and tenacity in the process. And now he’s back, and coming at mainstream success from yet another angle: on his fourth album (and first for new label Decca), Tried and True, Aiken now appears to be channeling his inner Bobby Darin by unleashing upon us an entire collection of big-band-era covers. (To prove he is serious about this, he even dares to tackle “Mack the Knife”!) Now, to be fair, I’ll disclose I haven’t heard as much as a note of this record, and it may well be triumphant from stem to stern, but just from scanning the tracklist, I see the precise same problem that sunk A Thousand Different Ways — Aiken’s ill-fated 2006 project — which is that he has chosen a series of tunes — in this case, titles like “Unchained Melody,” “Suspicious Minds,” and “Crying” (the lattermost of which is presented as a duet with the peerless Linda Eder, whom, one can only surmise, must have been promised the moon in exchange for these precious few moments of her time and talent) — upon whose shattering originals he cannot possibly improve. We shall see.

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