Brandon's Buzz

It’s 2:47am in Texas, and I’m wide frickin’ awake and watching that pulse-pounding Ultimate Rock Ballads infomercial that still kills me every time I see it, even a year later. I have updated the Buzz’s radio archive, I have made a Facebook event for my show with the great Suzy Bogguss next week, I have answered some emails, I have played Bejeweled, and now I’m going to try to tackle as much of this week’s record store report as I can before I fall asleep. There’s some true blockbusters in the mix this week, y’all, so dig in:

When irritating twitlets like Taylor Swift and Colbie Caillat re-release albums that aren’t even one year old in enhanced “deluxe edition” sets, my ass gets thoroughly and enormously chapped. But when an indisputable classic album returns to the spotlight with a brilliant three-disc reinvention that is clearly worthy of the effort, I’ll bow in reverent deference ten times out of ten, honey. And you best believe the latter is what’s going to take place this week when I finally manage to get my hot li’l hands the sparkling new 15th anniversary commemorative edition of one of the ten best albums of the 1990s — Sheryl Crow’s amazing debut record, Tuesday Night Music Club.

Teased to a knowing few via the luminous “Leaving Las Vegas” — still and forever, one of the finest debut singles in the history of pop music — and sent into orbit via the worldwide smashes “All I Wanna Do” and “Strong Enough,” Tuesday earned four Grammy nominations (and netted Crow three trophies, including one for Best New Artist) upon its release in 1994, and a decade and a half later, all of that brilliant music — from the rambunctious “Can’t Cry Anymore” to the bizarro “The Na-Na Song” — continues to hold up. (I dare you to think you can still say that about the material of Crow’s pop compadres like Lisa Loeb and Jewel!) And it has now been augmented with a 10-track bonus disc of b-sides and rarities, as well as a DVD containing the album’s videos and a documentary about Tuesday’s tumultuous road to existence. Looking for the perfect stocking stuffer this holiday season? Aww, baby, look no further.

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The last of 2008’s high profile releases arrive this week, and while it almost certainly won’t be enough to rescue the year from its commercial (if not quality) doldrums, it’s comforting to note that at least artists are still trying.

Released at the height of that nauseating emo movement that swept through the first half of this decade, their self-titled 2003 debut produced the radio hit “Swing, Swing” and seemed like the biggest flash in the pan this side of Marcy Playground. Thankfully, their brilliant 2005 sophomore effort changed all that: led by a trio of stickily melodic megasmashes (most notably the magnificent pop-driven title track) and uniformly terrific vocal work from lead singer Tyson Ritter, Move Along made them instant players in a crowded field. This week, The All-American Rejects return with their third album, When the World Comes Down. The lead single “Gives You Hell” fairly admirably splits the difference between the two distinct halves of their musical personality, and while these guys — much like Kings of Leon, who made an essentially identical choice and came up holding nothin’ but aces with their breakneck masterpiece Only By the Night — are taking no end of flak from their critics for pushing their sound in a more commercial direction, I say when the music sounds this good, get the hell over it already.

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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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Another jam-packed week is on tap, even if you don’t count the new country album from Jessica Simpson, which also drops on Tuesday.  (My official stance on that is as follows:  The Buzz carries no water for that vapid tramp.)  Don’t waste time reading this paragraph — there is much greatness that awaits you in the previews that follow.

Released without any fanfare in the summer of 1998, a beautifully haunting record called Dressed Up Like Nebraska quietly introduced the world to a bold new talent name of Josh Rouse.  Ten years and eight albums later, Rouse reflects on the last decade of his life with The Best of the Rykodisc Years, a double-disc, 32-track compilation with pulls together highlights (including, thankfully, Nebraska’s finest track, “Flair”) from that span of time.

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Back in fighting trim following a one-album crash landing in Prozacworld, R.E.M. — arguably the most influential (if not the most important) American band of the past two decades, and the band whose map for moving from humble beginnings to massive success ought to be certified by Rand McNally, it’s so widely used (look no further than the platinum-plated triumphs of Matchbox Twenty, Augustana, Fall Out Boy, and The Fray — among a hundred others — if you doubt that) — is back, and triumphantly so, with their 14th full-length record, the dizzily edgy Accelerate. Gone almost entirely (save a couple of acoustic-leaning tunes in the disc’s back half) are the languid, esoteric ballads that dominated (and, especially with the latter, quite nearly sunk) their last two efforts (2001’s brooding, introspective Reveal and 2004’s dreary, sluggish Around the Sun), and in their place, a handful of lean, mean, guitar-swamped rock tunes (average song length: just over three minutes) that harken back to the Murmur / Life’s Rich Pageant days.

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