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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Unless new material from Kristinia DeBarge and/or that High School Musical moppet Ashley Tisdale float your boat, this week’s new release slate is practically non-existent. No matter: this has been a fairly robust season for great new music, which always increases the odds that worthy material will slip through the cracks of your consciousness. So in lieu of a typical record store report this week, allow the Buzz to help you thresh the wheat from the chaff of summer ‘09:

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Of all the ridonk, useless “deluxe editions” to which we’ve been subjected of late, this relatively busy week brings one whose original album — a genuine modern classic — actually merits the upgrade. Read on:

 

Obviously emboldened by the brilliantly triumphant ’80s mix they assembled last spring, the folks at Now That’s What I Call Music! have trudged forth with a series of similarly themed compilations, and while subsequent editions (covering, among other genres, the best of country, classic rock, and Motown) have wholly failed to be as uniformly riveting as the ’80s set was, this week brings a fairly worthy successor, as Now That’s What I Call Power Ballads! lands in record stores. A sterling mix of evergreen chestnuts (Journey’s “Faithfully,” Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian,” Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” Tesla’s “Love Song”) and forgotten favorites (Sheriff’s “When I’m With You” and Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity,” a pair of tunes that haven’t crossed my mind in, literally, decades!), the only flaw that bars Ballads from reaching the same level as its vaunted ancestor is the complete and shameful absence of REO Speedwagon and Foreigner, a pair of pioneers who absolutely helped create the power ballad movement, and who could have easily been swapped out for subpar tracks by The Scorpions and Slaughter, neither of which deserves the coveted real estate (sandwiched in between Survivor’s heart-rending “The Search is Over” and Extreme’s smash throwback “More Than Words”) they have been inexplicably handed on this album. Also out this week: installment number 30 in the original Now! series, which passes muster with terrific radio hits from Lady GaGa, Britney Spears, Jason Mraz, Nickelback, and All-American Rejects.

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After sleepwalking through the past several weeks, we’ve finally got a release slate we can really sink our teeth into. While we wait to see what gifts this week’s lineup of music has in store for us, allow me to throw out this question for discussion: am I the only one who thinks the new U2 record is mind-numbingly inane and dull? What the hell was Rolling Stone thinking giving that ridiculousness a five-star review?! (I would take a stab at tackling that second one, but I’m afraid I already know the answer and it would just be way too depressing to see it in cold print.)

After Eric Clapton (whose incredible, stripped-down versions of “Layla” and the devastating “Tears in Heaven” notched their album sales of ten million-plus and won their performer a wagonful of Grammys) and Mariah Carey (whose impromptu cover of The Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” became a radio supersmash) showed the network what a commercial goldmine it had on its hands in the early ’90s, a spare and intimate appearance on “MTV Unplugged” suddenly became a mandatory promotional tool — within a pair of years, Neil Young, Nirvana, 10,000 Maniacs, and Melissa Etheridge all had turned in landmark performances — and for many, a nifty li’l comeback vehicle. Take the case of Rod Stewart, who reunited with his former Faces partner Ronnie Wood for an acoustic set and unwittingly hurled his career back into orbit. Thanks to a startlingly fine cover of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately,” upon which — to the surprise of more than a few — top 40 radio immediately leapt, the resulting live album, entitled Unplugged… and Seated, went on to move more than three million units stateside and produced two additional hit singles (a reworked version of his early classic “Reason to Believe” and a raucous cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party”). Unplugged returns this week in a special expanded edition which contains two bonus tracks — including a radically reinvented take on his 1989 smash “Forever Young” — as well as the original television broadcast, which finally makes a belated debut on DVD. And trust your Uncle Brandon, here if nowhere else: if only for Stewart’s priceless rendition — which can now be enjoyed aurally and visually, natch! — of Tom Waits’ unspeakably magnificent “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Waltzing Matilda),” this is worth the purchase price. (And memo to MTV, Natalie, and/or whomever else may be in charge of this: I’m still waiting for the aforementioned 10,000 Maniacs episode from 1993 — the recording of which would damn straight be one of my five desert island discs — to make its way to DVD, and am willing to do whatever is necessary — up to and including pleading right here on the Buzz — to facilitate the correction of that foolishness.)

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A historic live project from the queen of my heart is only one of this crowded week’s significant releases. Gentlemen, start your engines:

His debut disc — 2003’s flop A Beautiful World — sure didn’t make any waves, but a new reality emerged post-”SexyBack,” one in which criminally photogenic young men with preternaturally high voices and an immutable passion for synthesized soul could become megastars at the drop of an acutely tailored fedora.  And so it was decreed that Robin Thicke’s sophomore record, The Evolution of Robin Thicke, would make him an overnight sensation. (Oh yeah, and a killer single — the irresistibly cheesy “Lost Without U” — plus the Oprah stamp of approval, didn’t hurt nothin’.) Thicke took his time crafting album number three, but we finally get a taste of Something Else this week.

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For a minute there, didn’t it feel like Austin was gonna become the next Seattle?

In much the same way that Seattle gave birth to the grunge scene in the early ’90s, with homegrown bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam leading the zeitgeist-capturing charge, a new singer-songwriter boom — one, no doubt, which got kicked off by Jagged Little Pill, got stoked by the staggering success of Jewel’s debut and Sheryl Crow’s sophomore efforts, and got sent into orbit by the phenomenal, out-of-the-box success of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair — exploded across the landscape in the latter part of the decade, and, thanks to the emergence on the national stage of supremely gifted local talents like Patty Griffin, Kelly Willis, Shawn Colvin, Sister 7, Fastball, and the peerless Abra Moore, its epicenter was Austin. Having long labeled itself the “live music capital of the world,” the city had all of a sudden become ground zero in the most significant cultivation of introspective music since the early days of Dylan, Mitchell, Collins, and Taylor. (Clive Davis was so certain it was gonna stick that he launched the Arista/Austin imprint to discover and develop new artists.)

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A certain mismatch on paper, yet a striking triumph in practice, modern troubadour M. Ward (best known for his work with Beth Orton, Norah Jones, and Bright Eyes) and rising actress Zooey Deschanel (whose biggest claim to fame is almost certainly her bitterly raw turn opposite Paul Schneider in 2002’s gut-wrenching love story All the Real Girls, and who is still slated to portray the iconic Janis Joplin in Penelope Spheeris’ oft-delayed biopic) have joined forces to create the duo She & Him. Having first collaborated on an end-credits tune for the 2007 independent film The Go-Getter, Ward and Deschanel enjoyed the experience so much that they decided to tackle a full-length project, and She & Him, Volume 1 was born.

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