Brandon's Buzz

Last week’s new release slate was an absolute barn-burner. This week’s: yeah, not so much. Dig in:

• Previously released tunes from Joshua Radin and The Swell Season,
  as well as a new duet from Rachael Yamagata and Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, highlight the soundtrack for the new weepie Dear John.

 

• Mega-selling rapper Lil Wayne takes a stab at hard rock with his long-awaited latest, Rebirth.

 

• ’90s sensation Michael Bolton is back this week with a
  Target exclusive, a collection of hits and favorites recorded
  Live at the Royal Albert Hall.

 

• While his brothers take a brief break from the biz, Nick Jonas and his new band The Administration are up with a side project, Who I Am.

 

• Finally, Sherry Ann insisted that I not fail to mention (as if I would!)
  Almost Everything I Wish I’d Said the Last Time I Saw You, the new album from “One Tree Hill” regular Mike Grubbs and his band Wakey!Wakey!

It’s the first week of a new year, and the pickins are extremely slim. Have at it:

• She’s got the number one single — the ridiculous “Tik Tok” — in the crunchy right now. Now comes Animal, the full-length debut from Ke$ha.

 

• Since it includes tunes co-written by the likes of Paula Cole and Rachael Yamagata, is it really fair to judge Unbroken, the sophomore effort from former “American Idol” runner-up Katharine McPhee, before we’ve actually heard it?

 

• And finally, a CD/DVD combo chronicling Kanye West’s recent visit to VH1 Storytellers.

A pair of fascinating newcomers releasing long-awaited sophomore projects, up against a host of old pros returning to the spotlight, punctuate this week’s (regretfully belated — sorry, Sherry Ann!) record store report.  But don’t just take my word for it:

Her already legendary spot-on spoofs of Gov. Sarah Palin will almost certainly stand beside Dana Carvey’s oafish takeoffs on the elder George Bush in the upper echelon of “Saturday Night Live’s” political pantheon, and if there’s any justice, the enormous buzz generated thereby will draw some much-needed attention to the product of the peerless Tina Fey’s day job, as writer and star of NBC’s enormously funny riotous farce 30 Rock.  Critically adored — the series just swept the comedy Emmys, nabbing acting trophies for Fey and Alec Baldwin (as masterful a buffoon as can be found anywhere on the dial these days), as well as honors for the series itself and for its writing — but a Nielsen also-ran — even as a niche show, this thing’s ratings are paltry — Rock miraculously returns for its third season at the end of the month, and to whet appetites for the series’ imminent return, this week brings the arrival on DVD of the outrageously hilarious Season Two, which features another Emmy-nominated turn from Elaine Stritch (as Baldwin’s ribald mother) and guest turns from, among others, Jerry Seinfeld and Edie Falco.  The textbook definition of eccentric television, this often-demented series is certainly not for everyone.  But it is funny, and given how shockingly short is the supply on that these days in TV land, that’s worth celebrating.

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Four tumultuous years after her last release — 2004’s erratic Afrodisiac, which, despite its wild inconsistency, closed with her best-ever track:  the dazzling “Should I Go,” which was built around a riveting sample from Coldplay’s overblown “Clocks” and which sent a clear signal that she was seriously rethinking her lifeplan — Brandy is back, armed with both a cleared mind and with her strongest single since “The Boy is Mine,” the hilarious 1998 bitch-fest that won both herself and Miss Monica well-deserved Grammy awards.   Produced with uncharacteristic simplicity by the prolific Rodney Jerkins, “Right Here (Departed)” forgoes the beat-heavy nature of much of Jerkins’ past discography and makes Brandy’s terrific voice — nearing thirty now, and richer than ever — the song’s unopposed centerpiece.  (Contrast “Departed” with a few of Brandy’s other singles, especially from this decade — 2002’s horrifying trainwreck “What About Us” springs to mind — and you’ll instantly recognize and appreciate what an unexpected gem this truly is.)  The new album is due early next year, and if it sounds anything like its leadoff single, I’d say we’re in for a smashing return to form from an artist whose learning curve has been pretty damned breathtaking to behold.

The physical CD won’t be available until September 30, but Simple Things, the hotly-anticipated sophomore effort from brilliant boy wonder Joshua Radin (whose soothing debut release, 2006’s We Were Here, was a textbook model of shattering grace) went up at iTunes on Tuesday, and I’m here to tell you:  although I detest the idea of buying digital albums — hey, I’m ol’ school, I like having something tangible and concrete, something to hold in my hands, at the end of a transaction — this is probably the closest I’ve ever come to breaking my own rule.  In the end I decided to wait until month’s end (although the ever-expanding torture will be intense), but I broke down and purchased the one album track — “You Got Growin’ Up to Do,” a sweetly haunting duet with one Patty Griffin, a magnificent artist who most certainly knows from such things — that I couldn’t stand not to immediately own.  Combine Radin’s return with imminent new projects from Ray LaMontagne and Rachael Yamagata (herself out to follow up a masterful debut), and you understand that the singer-songwriter movement — seemingly an endangered species in these times when a full four of the crunchy’s top twenty singles have that doofus Akon’s name on them — is still alive and kicking.

After what seems like years, the dreadful month of August is finally crawling to an end, and taking with it the abominably dull music lineup which has bogged us down since late July.  And now that we can turn our attention toward fall and its transformative glory, we can begin to anticipate with breathless, open-mouthed vigor the terrific tuneage laying in wait for us.

The item I was most looking forward to this season was The Annie Lennox Collection, a first-ever solo best-of set from one of the most fiercely divine artists we have.  But after word broke last week that Lennox required emergency spinal surgery, Collection was pushed back to spring 2009 so that its creator could have ample recovery time.

Fear not, however:  Ms. Lennox, as monumentally necessary as she may be in our lives, wasn’t slated to be the only game in town this fall.  New works from Pink, James Taylor, Rachael Yamagata, Whitney Houston, Sarah McLachlan, and many others are in the pipeline, as are the following five records, which — now that Lennox has been taken off the table — I’ll confess I am most excited about.

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Another relatively light week is on tap, although if you’re feeling nostalgic, you’ll find a pair of touchstones — one from the ’80s, one from the ’90s — in the pipeline as you do your shopping this Tuesday. Behold:

After an endless wait, one of television’s smartest and most beloved situation comedies finally began making its way to DVD last year, and the latest release arrives this week. The Fourth Season of Family Ties was a watershed one for the series; having been paired with “The Cosby Show” on Thursday nights, the show was finally a ratings bonanza after several years of flying below the radar, and thanks to box office smash Back to the Future, its young star Michael J. Fox had just become a bona fide superstar. Season four also introduced to the series two of its funniest and most memorable ancillary characters, as the oldest Keaton kids both found true love: Alex, with fellow co-ed Ellen Reed (the terrific Tracy Pollan), and Mallory, with dropout sculptor Nick Moore (the hilarious Scott Valentine). The resulting complications — Alex deciding to take up ballet, or the riotous family dinner in which Mallory introduced Nick to the mortified Keaton clan, to name but two — rank among the show’s most remarkable moments.

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Admittedly, Brooke, I’m biased.

Sixteen years ago this August, an astonishing flame-haired raven name of Tori Amos cajoled her incomparably seductive self into my life and instantaneously hurled my very being straight and plumb off its axis. For reasons that aren’t remotely relevant to this particular conversation — though they merit (and will almost certainly eventually win) their own future blog post — 1992 remains, in its own way, the single most important and noteworthy of my 32 years on this planet. Thanks wholly to unrequited, emotionally draining crushes on Craig Doughten and Annie Lennox — and, all these eons later, it remains a fair toss-up which of those two people was more unattainable, despite my daily access to no fewer than one of them — it was the first year I got really serious both about writing and about music appreciation. Quite true, I had always loved music — hey, I still remember, and with the fondest grace in my heart’s most sacred quadrant, Dad driving his downright giddy eight year old son up to the TG&Y to buy anything that contained “Karma Chameleon,” and trust me here if nowhere else: yes, Brooke, an eight year old’s palms can sweat, honey — but ‘92 tore across my mind like a gale, like an huracán.

Nothing was left standing.

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