Brandon's Buzz

As has become typical of late, between day job responsibilities and preparing for my radio show, I was so swamped last week that the record store report sadly fell to the bottom of the pile. (On that front, if you missed my blockbuster chat with the incredible Brett Claywell this past Tuesday night, be sure and check it out in the Buzz’s radio archive.) Hence, a super-sized doubleheader this week. The new release wall is hopping lately, kids. Get on board:

(PS: Full disclosure and all — A and I are initiating the brand new liquor cabinet this evening, so I’m writing this while sipping a Jack and Coke. Therefore, if something feels a bit… off… about the text contained herein, it might be because I am typing while tipsy.)

Despite being one of 2009’s most entrancing pieces of music, the risky, brilliant lead single “Dead Flowers” failed to take off at country radio last summer (which, sadly, I predicted in a Buzz post last May). And while it’s slowly climbing, I’m not sure how much better second single “White Liar” will ultimately fare in what is certain to be a Carrie-driven fall. Still, that magnificent spitfire Miranda Lambert has a whole passel of folks rooting for her success, and the fact that each of her first two albums are pushing platinum status despite minimal radio play means she must be doing something right. Don’t be afraid to dive in to her brand new third album, Revolution.

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It’s a huge week out there in music land, as the favorite artists of both myself and Sherry Ann come up to bat with highly anticipated new efforts. Only time will tell if they are worth the wait, but the early returns are certainly encouraging. Take a gander:

Since she is without question the planet’s foremost Kate Voegele authority, I asked the magnificent Sherry Ann to compose some text regarding this week’s release of A Fine Mess, Voegele’s sophomore album. What follows is her response in its entirety: “Stay out of it,
Nick Lachey!” Six words that made me laugh so hard that I nearly fell off the couch while watching “One Tree Hill” two weeks ago. While no one else in the room with me at the time found those words particularly funny, I was vindicated when
“The Soup” picked up on the scene and has been showing it non-stop. These words were spoken by Mia Catalano, also known as Kate Voegele, whose sophomore album, A Fine Mess, drops this week. Voegele uses her onscreen alter ego to debut her music to the loyal Tree Hill brethren each week in the hopes that we will run right over to iTunes after the show and buy it, which I do every time. I have purchased five of the singles from this album on iTunes in the months leading up to its release, and I fully intend to march into the local record store and buy the album on Tuesday. The standout track for me is “Angels,” which does have a Vanessa Carlton-type of quality to it (but hey, I am a sucker for any chick that can play the piano). Another great track is “Manhattan from the Sky” — another piano pop song that has a catchy chorus — which was inspired by the way the city looks from cruising altitude. Bottom line on this album is that “One Tree Hill’s” head honcho Mark Schwahn has personally given his stamp of approval to 5 of the 12 songs on this album. What else do you need to hear? Buy it! (Editor’s note: First, aren’t all of her songs of the piano-based pop variety; and second, couldn’t have said it better myself.)

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Regular readers of this blog may or may not know that once upon a time, I was writing a novel.  (I say was because, even though I often refer back to it in my mind’s eye — twenty or thirty times a day, easy — and have come to quite enjoy torturing myself by toying with the notion of revisiting it in a serious way — an idea that I’ll one day make a concrete reality — I haven’t set finger one upon it in years.)  The book is about a hundred different things — and is driven by and populated with every bit as byzantine a constellation of backstories and bystanders as you’d reasonably expect from an author who is also a soap fan of nearly three decades — but, primarily, the book is about a guy.  Jeremy.  Early 30s.  Recovering alcoholic.  Hasn’t spoken to his brother in a decade over a ridiculously lopsided family inheritance which failed to break in his favor.  Doesn’t know how to admit it, but is still madly, hopelessly, irrevocably in love with the very first object — a flaxen-haired, brutally forthright gem of a gal — of his intensely loyal affection.

It may not make a hell of a lot of sense here in the boiled-down synopsis (and, truth be told, it may not make much more sense in the actual book), but Jeremy was once a successful trial lawyer in Boston, and is now a warbling piano player in a smoky Florida nightclub.  (It’s a long road from there to here, that seemingly wonky transition, and the minutiae therein aren’t terribly relevant to the particular yarn I’m spinning for you now, so let’s just go with this:  as increasingly detached as the repetitive tedium of his daily existence as an attorney made him feel, that’s how increasingly fulfilled Jeremy is by the fresh thrill of plugging his mind and heart and hands into the concrete joy of creation, and of imagination, as a piano man.)

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I’m currently working (I promise!) on a Madonna playlist (for which A has been waiting patiently, as he requested it many months ago), as well as one inspired by Rick Dees’ legendary Weekly Top 40 program (archived episodes of which I’m thrilled to tell you are played on Sunday afternoons — commercial free! — on XM’s ’90s channel), but when I ran across the shimmering new single from one of the planet’s all-time great people — that sparkling newlywed Mandy Moore — on iTunes last week, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reaffirm my profound devotion to her boundless brilliance.

Out in front of the May 26 street date for Amanda Leigh, Moore’s much-anticipated sixth studio record, the terrific romp of a lead single “I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week” stands as an invigorating blast of pop nirvana and proves for all the world that Moore is an artist to be reckoned with.  (Any doubts that remained about that very fact in the wake of the aural miracles Moore set free on 2007’s grand, wondrous Wild Hope, “Heart” washes them clean downstream.)

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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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So, we finally have a new president, which means we can finally get back to the important stuff: what we’ll be listening to when we realize that the cesspool of American politics will likely do to him exactly what it did to most of the rest of ‘em. Lucky for us, we’ll always have magnificent music on which to fall back.

Speaking of our new president, a compilation album which was commissioned Barack Obama’s campaign (and which, heretofore, was only available with a donation to the campaign’s website) has been granted a mass release.
Yes We Can: Voices of a Grassroots Movement features previously released tracks from Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, and Stevie Wonder, among others, as well as a new track from John Legend (an impassioned cover of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)”) and a new collaboration — their second — between Kanye West and Maroon 5’s lead singer Adam Levine.

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Generally speaking, at least where music is concerned, the holiday shopping season really gets going the first week of November.  But with next Tuesday being Election Day and all, and with more emphasis than ever being placed on first-day sales, the record companies are largely shying away from that as a viable release date.  Consequently, this week is beyond crowded.  I advised you all last week not to get complacent; read on to see why that was a fair warning.

The acronym’s a nifty play on those controversial print ads which made their target a pop culture buzz magnet last spring; alas, the thirty-two point letters on the album’s cover akshully stand for Original Music Featured on ‘Gossip Girl’. An entire array of under-the-radar acts fills this collection, although appearances are made by The Kooks, Junkie XL, and current flavors of the week The Ting Tings. Could be fun, could be a sprawling, self-indulgent mess.

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In a smashingly brilliant follow up to last year’s monumental ten-disc Classic Soft Rock collection — the infomercial promoting which was hosted by Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock (those peerless bastions of ’80s schmaltz who were better recognized by the masses as Air Supply) and was one of the finest, most compelling half-hours of television I have ever witnessed — the fabulous folks at Time-Life have truly outdone themselves with Ultimate Rock Ballads, a new eight-album assemblage of music which pulls together 133 of the most essential percussive dirges from the past four decades into one gloriously cheesy listening experience.

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No offense to the girls who managed to stay afloat in a crowded field during the sun-scorched months — imports Duffy and Leona Lewis both managed to score critical and commercial bullseyes, and Cyndi Lauper, an old friend of ours from way back, came out of nowhere with what was my hands-down favorite album of the summer, the brazenly brilliant Bring Ya to the Brink (more on that in an upcoming now hear this post celebrating the season’s strongest offerings) — but it was, by and large, the guys who made the music of summer 2008 such a pleasant surprise.  Fall is on our doorsteps, but before we close the book on the season just passed, let’s take a glance back at the men (some young, others not so much) who gave us the works of art worth getting out of bed for.

She has never asked me to explain the origins and the depths of my seemingly nonsensical obsession with one Hilary Duff, so I have likewise refrained from forcing Sherry Ann to quantify her fixation with that supreme doofus Jason Mraz.  (Mocking it outright is markedly easier, besides.)  Best known for his inescapably goofy 2003 radio smash “The Remedy (I Won’t Worry),” Mraz and his often-cloying attempts at flippant cleverness have the most mystifying effect on Sherry Ann’s otherwise potent mind.  (However, as the proud owner of all of Duff’s records, up to and including all of the Lizzie McGuire soundtracks — film and television, honey — I understand better than most that we all have our vices.)

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A pair of deluxe re-releases — one of them absolutely deserved, and the other nothing more than a desperate attempt to boost a waning album’s relevance — highlight the latest report from the front lines. So without further ado, I give you this week’s music roster:

Said to be his strongest, most sonically satisfying effort since Odelay, the 1997 Grammy-winning classic that ensured he would be remembered as much more than a flukish one-hit wonder, Beck returns this week with Modern Guilt, a sleek, tight ten track collaboration with Danger Mouse (otherwise known as the crazy (-ier?) half of Gnarls Barkley). The advance reviews on Guilt have been downright orgasmic; only time will tell if they have any basis in reality.

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7:10 pm: Due to an agricultural emergency (don’t ask), I’m a little late in liveblogging the “American Idol” finale. That’s what I get for hyping this to you people!

7:11 pm: At any rate, dinner is ready (and a tad burnt), the TV’s on, and we’re ready to go. I haven’t missed a performance yet, but I’m fifteen good minutes late in introducing you to the cast of characters. Screw it; we’ll do it on the fly.

7:14 pm: Good lord, Daddy Clive is picking songs again. Remember that year he picked “Open Arms” for Elliott Yamin and he blew it?

7:15 pm: Who put Andrew Lloyd Webber in charge of the peanut gallery?

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