Brandon's Buzz

November kicks off with a bang, as country’s hottest-selling lass is back with her hotly-anticipated third album, which has her working with some eyebrow-raising collaborators. Dig in:

 

Pop music’s venerable Now series is back this week with a pair of new entries, as recent radio hits from A’s beloved Black Eyed Peas (their record-breaking number one smash “I Gotta Feeling”), Jordin Sparks (the terrific “Battlefield”), Katy Perry (“Waking Up in Vegas,” a guilty pleasure if I ever heard one), Michael Franti and Spearhead (their cheeky top 40 breakthrough “Say Hey (I Love You)”), and others punctuate Now That’s What I Call Music, Vol. 32; and a fascinating cross-section of unforgettable club smashes from the past three decades turn up on Now That’s What I Call Dance Classics!, including any number of one hit wonders from the likes of The Weather Girls (“It’s Raining Men,” with the amazing Martha Wash blowing the roof off the joint), CeCe Peniston (“Finally”), Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock (their oft-sampled touchstone “It Takes Two”), and others. This is all well and good, mind you, and will probably find its way into my collection, since I have a profound weakness for this kind of thing. But please don’t tell me I’m the only one who is shattered by the Now folks’ decision to omit Everything But the Girl’s legendary 1996 monster hit “Missing” from this tracklist. Gotta tell you, guys: Todd Terry’s brilliant decision to lay down a furiously insistent house beat just beneath Tracey Thorn’s abominably sexy croon made for what I call a dance classic every damn day o’ the week. Recognize.

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The Buzz’s record store report celebrates its one-year anniversary this week with some welcome new visits from some of this author’s all-time favorite artists. Can’t think of a better way to mark the occasion.

With painfully earnest vocal work from the terrific Emerson Hart, and with sensationally radio-ready angst-ridden fare like their 1997 crossover debut smash “If You Could Only See,” they seemed a fair bet for megastardom. Problem was, so did all the other bands — Third Eye Blind, Sister Hazel, The Wallflowers, Son Volt — with whom they emerged from the post-grunge haze of the late ’90s, and after three albums and a handful of well-received singles which nonetheless failed to capture the magic of their breakthrough, they called it quits, and this week, you can find the highlights of their discography streamlined into one disc with A Casual Affair: The Best of Tonic. Don’t miss the inexplicably ignored 1999 singles “You Wanted More” and “Mean to Me” to get a sense of the potential these guys certainly owned, and, as with last week’s Wallflowers best-of set, the Best Buy version of Casual comes bundled with a bonus DVD, containing five of Tonic’s music videos.

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Blessedly, this week is markedly different than the wallet-buster that kicked off this month in high style. (Good thing, too, because I find myself so hopelessly enchanted by The Fray’s riveting new disc — my early favorite song from which is track number five, the gloriously wrenching “Never Say Never” — that I haven’t had a chance to listen to anything else that dropped last week.) Take this breather as a chance to play catch-up, because that’s certainly what the Buzz is gonna be doin’.

(Incidentally, believe it or not, this marks the Buzz’s 200th (!) post. Many, many thanks to all of you who continue to allow this silliness into your daily lives. If you have as much fun reading these musings as I do writing them, we’re all having a gay old time. So to speak.)

On a high following last summer’s surprising and triumphant comeback, legendary country crooner Glen Campbell reminds his fans of the good ol’ days this week with yet another best-of set. Titled simply Greatest Hits, the record includes pretty much all of Campbell’s best-remembered classics — from “Wichita Lineman” to “Galveston” to “Southern Nights” to even “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in L.A.)” — and all of them are newly (and crisply) remastered. (Misleadingly, they’re called “remixes” here, but don’t be fooled: the songs have just been cleaned up.) Also tossed in for good measure are a pair of tracks — “Times Like These” (a Foo Fighters cover) and “These Days” (a Jackson Browne chestnut) from last summer’s Meet Glen Campbell, the man’s most successful album in three decades. And if you’re looking for some one-stop Glen shopping, the Buzz proclaims you could do far worse than this.

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The long-awaited release of an almost twenty year old classic sitcom, plus the latest works from a pair of relative newcomers who seem poised for strong second acts, highlight the coming week. Let’s dive right in:

Two years ago, a percussive thriller called Boys and Girls in America — a wild blast that whipped hints of country, rock, blues, and straight-up punk into one frothy hell of a fucked-up fromage — punched The Hold Steady’s ticket to the big time. Looking to build on that buzz, the group — led by the gruff Craig Finn (and don’t ask me why the stark contrast between dark voice and light lyric works this well) — is up this week with its fourth album, Stay Positive.

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