Brandon's Buzz

January roars to a close with a ferocious cross-section of great new music to choose from, including what may stand as the two most-anticipated sophomore outings of the new year. Take a look:

Even though it has sold well over one million copies (largely on the strength of her name and of residual goodwill toward her), and even though it’s loaded with drive-time-friendly fare (most prominently, the shockingly frisky “Million Dollar Bill”), pop radio has largely failed to take the bait on the divine Whitney Houston’s underrated latest album I Look to You. But this week brings a reminder that once upon a magical time, she was the queen of pop music, as Arista marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of her sterling thirteen-times-platinum debut with a deluxe edition re-release. Newly added to the record are a trio of dance remixes, a remarkable a capella take on Houston’s classic “How Will I Know,” and a live version of “Greatest Love of All.” Also included: a DVD featuring the album’s four music videos, new interviews with Houston and Arista’s founder Clive Davis, and a rare clip of Houston’s national debut on The Merv Griffin Show.

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October roars to a close with a huge list of necessary tuneage, including a must-own new album from one of the best bands going. Dig in:

The year’s most hotly-anticipated theatrical event lands this week when This Is It — a film culled from over one hundred hours of footage of Michael Jackson’s final days, footage recorded during rehearsals for what were to be Jackson’s farewell concerts — debuts on three thousand screens today. To accompany the film, which is expected to be an epic, record-shattering blockbuster, comes an identically-titled 2-CD soundtrack, which contains a collection of Michael’s best-loved classics, as well as the Paul Anka-penned title track, which was discovered in a box of tapes in one of Jackson’s vaults this past summer following his passing.

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We all get a week to catch our collective breaths following the end-of-September blowout and in preparation for the imminent holiday shopping onslaught. Behold:

She is nothing less than one of the finest singers in the history of the world, and to the betterment of everyone, the divine Linda Eder is back in the spotlight with her eleventh studio album, Soundtrack. A covers project, the album contains adventurous renditions of a handful of Eder’s favorite film tunes, including modern standards like “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” (from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) and “Accidentally in Love” (from Shrek). But the undeniable standout track is a wildly bold take on last year’s Academy Award winner for Best Original Song, Once’s “Falling Slowly.” If you, like me, can scarcely imagine anybody on the planet besides Glen and Marketa singing those words, just wait ’til you get a load of this.

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The Clay Aiken brouhaha which erupted around last week’s record store report led to this blog’s most-viewed week in its nearly one-year history, and I certainly hope all you vehement Claymates liked what you saw and will stick around a spell. And to the handful of posters (jmh123, in particular) at the Finding Clay Aiken fan forum (from which the majority of my site’s hits emanated last week) who questioned why I called Mr. Aiken’s 2006 covers album, A Thousand Different Ways, baffling, and who wondered whether or not I have actually even listened to same, I very much wanted to respond on your site and even signed up for a username and account, but wasn’t approved by your administrators, so I’ll respond here: I called the album “baffling” because a covers record is not exactly the most savvy career move for a young artist who is getting ready to make only his second career album — it’s bad enough when legacy artists like Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow get pigeonholed into it — and, furthermore, the world doesn’t really need remakes of Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do” or Paul Young’s “Everytime You Go Away” (which offended Sherry Ann — world’s biggest Paul Young fan, that one — all the way down to the marrow of her bones) or Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word,” as those songs were indelibly performed the first time around, and Clay’s arrangements of those tunes weren’t markedly different from the originals. (And yes, I’m absolutely aware that the album wasn’t Clay’s idea or concept, so please don’t attack me with that news flash, but why even bother if you’re not going to bring something new to the song you’re covering?!) Nonetheless, I assure you, I have listened to Ways, multiple times, and I found a handful of its tracks — most notably his Pure Moods-esque take on Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” (done as a fascinating collaboration with poet Erin Taylor); his sped-up reworking of Richard Marx’s all-time classic “Right Here Waiting” (although I continue to wish that either Clay or his producer would have had the balls to insist on going for that full-throated high note at the song’s climax instead of playing it safe, since it’s clear that Clay is more than capable of pulling off those vocal acrobatics); or his blistering cover of Foreigner’s landmark “I Want to Know What Love Is” (which I mentioned loving in last week’s post) — to be breathtaking in their sheer audacity and joie, and ultimately, I believe Clay did the very best he could with what was, at its core, a phenomenally bad idea.

But enough of that: with bigger and better fish to fry, I now present to you this week’s records:

Another best-of set of sorts, and this one from one of the most quirky and unique performers in the business, the lovely Miss Cassandra Wilson, who has cherry-picked a handful of older pop favorites that she has “interpreted” on her seven studio albums and has assembled them on Closer to You: The Pop Side. Among the gorgeous chestnuts included here: a cover of The Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville” that you gotta hear to believe, as well as a ferocious take on The Band’s classic “The Weight,” a plainly tender reading of Sting’s “Fragile,” and what is perhaps the most deliriously engrossing and emotionally raw take on Cyndi Lauper’s legendary “Time After Time” that I’ve ever heard. (I know, I know, once you’ve heard the incomparable Patti LaBelle sing those extraordinary lyrics, it’s real hard for any other version to hold a candle, but if Wilson’s sultry vibe doesn’t give you a shiver or two, do move your ears a soupcon closer to the speakers.)

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A and I walked into Starbucks yesterday in search of nothing more than a post-lunch slice of blueberry coffee cake.  Better believe I walked out of there brandishing significantly more than that.  While standing at the register waiting for the cute barista to serve up our sweets, I picked up and began to peruse the back cover of Hear Music’s latest masterfully assembled compilation, This is Us:  Songs from Where You Live, and damn near fainted from the sheer gorgeous majesty emanating from the disc.

Promising in the description that this record portrays “the wistfulness that lingers when home is far over the horizon” — a tall task, that — you’ll be demolished when you realize just how brilliantly (and with what kind of devastating surgical precision) it goes about accomplishing that exact goal:  Us starts out on a breathtaking high note, with Michael Penn and Aimee Mann’s — very much our generation’s John and Yoko, only criminally less famous — amazing 2002 cover of the Beatles’ “Two of Us” (is it heresy to say that I quite prefer their version to the Fab Four’s nondescript original?  As Sherry Ann will haply attest, I luvs me some Michael Penn, honey), and the tracklist really hits its stride in the disc’s second quarter, with a bam-bam-bam-bam shot of Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (with the title track from their heart-wrenching, spectacular 2007 motion picture Once, which is already well on its way to becoming the music-centric film of its — and, perhaps, any other — time), Feist & The Constantines (teaming up on a radically downtempo take on the ’80s classic “Islands in the Stream” which, even though it’s not by half as much gloriously trashy fun as Barry Manilow and Reba McEntire’s recent remake, is just plain revelatory for all the emotion it manages to unearth in simply mellowing the groove), my beloved Josh Ritter (helping out Mark Geary on a sensational song called “Ghosts”), and the terrific troubadouress Gillian Welch (the melancholy masterpiece “Orphan Girl”).  I’m telling you, by the time you hit track number ten — She & Him’s astonishing acoustic cover of Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” about which I’ve already waxed rhapsodic here — if you’re not ready to rush to the phone and tell your mommy how much you love and miss her, you’re a stronger man than I, guaran-damn-teed.  And it doesn’t even stop there:  sterling recent efforts from Shelby Lynne (“I Only Want to Be With You,” a highlight from her too-little-heard 2007 Dusty tribute Just a Little Lovin’), David Gray (“You’re the World to Me,” the radio single, which I initially found to be subpar but which has grown on me exponentially, from his Greatest Hits), and Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris (a track from their stellar collaboration All the Roadrunning which gives this collection its title), all light the way toward the record’s shattering conclusion, wherein that long-lost genius Jennifer Warnes — who has been desperately missed, at least in my house — reteams with her mentor Leonard Cohen for a soul-cleansing reading of his all-time classic “Joan of Arc,” an album climax so thoroughly worthy of the tumescent build-up that precedes it that you want to hit your stereo’s repeat button and let this record engulf you anew with its aural magic.

The musical equivalent of Mom’s mac and cheese, or her chicken soup, or her embrace that you’ve been craving in the six months since you last saw her, Us is a warm, comforting knockout, and a gentle but firm reminder that home is where you find it. Get thee to your nearest Starbucks immediately, and find it for yourself.

A number of this week’s high-profile releases are dropping a day early to get a jump on the pre-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy, and though there are still a handful of A-listers in the pipeline — Miss Britney next week, and Fall Out Boy on December 16, most notably — what follows represents the meat and potatoes of ’08’s holiday slate of music. Eat up, kids.

His last American album — the unfairly ignored The Lead and How to Swing It, which featured a knockout guest appearance, done as a favor to her record label, by one Tori Amos — was released fourteen years ago, and while 1999’s Reload was an overseas blockbuster, he’s been off the radar for most of the last decade. But that all changes this week, as ’60s icon Tom Jones, the man whose slick swagger practically invented the term “blue-eyed soul,” returns with his much-hyped comeback effort, 24 Hours. Emboldened both by the back-to-basics return to form of Neil Diamond, and by the retro-soul explosion touched off by Amy Winehouse, Jones looks to find the sailing fairly smooth. All he’s gotta do now is deliver a great album.

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