Brandon's Buzz

January roars to a close with a ferocious cross-section of great new music to choose from, including what may stand as the two most-anticipated sophomore outings of the new year. Take a look:

Even though it has sold well over one million copies (largely on the strength of her name and of residual goodwill toward her), and even though it’s loaded with drive-time-friendly fare (most prominently, the shockingly frisky “Million Dollar Bill”), pop radio has largely failed to take the bait on the divine Whitney Houston’s underrated latest album I Look to You. But this week brings a reminder that once upon a magical time, she was the queen of pop music, as Arista marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of her sterling thirteen-times-platinum debut with a deluxe edition re-release. Newly added to the record are a trio of dance remixes, a remarkable a capella take on Houston’s classic “How Will I Know,” and a live version of “Greatest Love of All.” Also included: a DVD featuring the album’s four music videos, new interviews with Houston and Arista’s founder Clive Davis, and a rare clip of Houston’s national debut on The Merv Griffin Show.

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It’s the first night of a brand new year (and a new decade!), and I lay on the couch (which A lovingly calls “my throne”) watching my beloved watch his “Glee” DVDs and ruminating on the year just ended. Musically speaking, the aughts produced far stronger slates than what was offered up in 2009, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that any of what follows won’t stand proudly alongside any previous year’s diamonds.

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Sherry Ann and I have this thing between us that we lovingly call “The Whitney Houston Rule,” which came to exist in the winter of 1998 when Miss Whitney became positively livid with the Recording Academy — not because they failed to nominate her soundtrack for The Preacher’s Wife for any major Grammys, but because they nominated her in what she perceived to be the wrong categories.  See, Whitney considered Wife to be the gospel album she had long dreamed of making, and while it was indeed top-heavy with selections from the God-is-love songbook, it also contained a handful of viable radio singles, enough to keep the boys at Hot 97 happy, and so the Academy deemed that the album was only eligible for the R&B categories, a decision which so enraged Whitney that she proceeded to embark on a nationwide press tour announcing her immense dissatisfaction over the news and proclaiming that she would not be showing up to that year’s ceremony to accept any awards she might win.  (The single funniest moment of this madness was when she appeared on “Entertainment Tonight” and slapped a deluxe diva diatribe — “I’m sick of work bein’ done and people not recognizin’ it!!” — upside poor Bob Goen’s head.  To this day, over a decade later, whenever either Sherry Ann or myself wish to give voice to something which frustrates or annoys us, we always preface it by cooing, Whitney-style, “No, Bob…”; and, to this day, the audio of Whitney’s hilarious hissyfit can be found on my iPod, where it continues to stay in pretty heavy rotation.)

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One of modern music history’s premier divas has officially launched her long-awaited comeback, as the one and only Whitney Houston returns to center stage this week with her sixth studio album, I Look to You. Last heard from — musically, at least — on 2002’s horrendous, howlingly awful slap job Just Whitney (am I the only one who remembers, for all the wrong reasons, “Whatchulookinat”?), Houston is back — hardly wizened, mind you, but hardly none the worse for wear, either — cautiously (perhaps overly so) dipping her big toe back into the water to see if time and the ever-dynamic world of pop have passed her by.

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The new release wall returns to Earth this week following last week’s end-of-August blowout, with only one truly major release commanding your attention. Take a look:

Summer’s biggest blast of pure pop fun, the brilliantly wacky “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” — which masterfully marries a flamenco guitar with a pulsing techno beat, and then tosses in a measure of deep-voiced Spanish rap and sex talk, just for the hell of it — finally gets a full-length album to surround it, as Miami rapper Pitbull releases his fourth record, Rebelution, this week. Akon, Lil Jon, Slim and others drop by to collaborate, and while it’s not clear how the rest of the album will stack up against “Want Me” — and you can damn well bet no fewer than fifteen DJs and producers are trying right this very minute to deconstruct that track and figure out exactly why it works so well — there’s no question that the ‘Bull has just taken his burgeoning career to the next level, and is ready for takeoff.

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Summer’s most highly anticipated record — at least for the Buzz’s money — arrives in stores this week, and if the first single is any indication, we’re about to drown in a cascade of fabulousness. Read on:

One of the finest female voices in the history of country music, the incredible and endlessly fascinating Tanya Tucker, makes a long-awaited comeback this week with My Turn, her first album in eight years. Turn finds Tucker — who has never sounded better, and that’s saying something! — turning the tables on the music men she has long admired by covering some of their best-known tunes. Among the highlights: a playful take on Charley Pride’s classic “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?” and a slightly mellow version of Merle Haggard’s “Ramblin’ Fever,” as well as what is quite possibly the best cover of Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me” since Jann Arden’s devastating one twelve years ago.

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The bikinis are already out in full effect (lord love those becleavaged CenTex beauties), the mercury is already scorching (Austin promises to be in triple-digit territory by next weekend), and the pop has already taken a turn toward the mindless (thank you, Lady GaGa, for reigniting a trend, milady). Means only one thing: the long, hot summer is upon us once again, and spring, with its life-affirming promises of the spirit of renewal, has been sent packing for another year.

Sometime around early April, with the dazzling second act laid down by a white-hot cadre of Colorado boys who call themselves The Fray and the stunning returns to form turned in by Pet Shop Boys, Wynonna, Annie Lennox, and Kelly Clarkson, it became very clear that music as a whole had regained its mojo following a bumpy time last fall, and that, at least creatively, the industry was firing on all eight cylinders. Some damn fine tuneage made its way to the forefront of our collective consciousness in the season just passed; what follows directly is a convincing cross-section of same:

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I wrote the majority of what follows last night while flying home from Las Vegas (where I managed to enjoy a weekend of enormous fun and mirth wholly in spite of the fact that I failed to win as much as a penny), so if this week’s record store report seems a bit incoherent, blame the oversized slice of Sbarro pizza I scarfed down at the airport, which — though it tasted utterly divine going down — gave me the worst case of heartburn I can ever recall.

She has strayed away from that formula in recent years, but there’s no question that Mariah Carey made her name belting out sappy love songs — and the schmaltzier, the better, especially in those early years.  Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Carey has assembled eighteen of her best-remembered slow jams (line ‘em up:  from “Vision of Love” and “Love Takes Time” up through “One Sweet Day” and even “Thank God I Found You,” they’re all here) and is re-releasing them as simply The Ballads, and while much of this is as disposable as it was then, pay special attention to a pair of tracks — “When You Believe,” her 1998 diva-fest duet with Whitney Houston (who was still remarkably, umm, sane in those years), and “Without You,” Carey’s smashing 1994 cover of Harry Nilsson’s classic — which have aged with stunning and extraordinary grace.

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The march toward February 3 continues in earnest, and while there’s not a hell of a lot here to jump up and down about, you might get reacquainted with a forgotten gem or two this week, and that’s also worth celebrating.

Sizzling cameos from modern blues legends
Doyle Bramhall II and Susan Tedeschi (who just happens to be the bandleader’s wife, wink wink) highlight Already Free, the sixth album from
The Derek Trucks Band. Free — which features a smashing cover of Bob Dylan’s “Down in the Flood” among its eleven originals — finds the band moving away from their bluesy roots and toward a more streamlined, soulful rock sound. I say talent this good is welcome in any capacity.

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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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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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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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While the industry gears up for fall, the typical August doldrums are in full swing, as evidenced by this week’s threadbare music lineup, but take heart: with a “new” Eva Cassidy album due at the end of the month, the sophomore record from Jon McLaughlin (one of last year’s most intriguing (and gorgeous) newcomers), an official live recording of Tori Amos’ historic early-’90s appearances at the Montreaux Jazz Festival (the bootlegs of which have been long-treasured amongst Amos’ rabid faithful), and breathlessly anticipated efforts from Ray LaMontagne, Annie Lennox (via a just-announced best-of set dotted with new songs), Michelle Branch, Whitney Houston, U2, James Taylor, Lee Ann Womack, and Oasis in the pipeline, autumn 2008 promises to be astonishing. All we gotta do is get there.

Easily the funniest and most enjoyable of the largely lamentable sitcoms that occupied the plum real estate following “Seinfeld” during the latter half of the ’90s (though — full disclosure and all — the opening episodes of “Veronica’s Closet” had their share of hilarious highlights, methought), Caroline in the City: The First Season lands on DVD this fine week. Starring Lea Thompson as the titular character, a cartoonist looking for love and laughs in the Big Apple, the series featured invaluable supporting turns from Amy Pietz (as Caroline’s best friend Annie, a dancer in the chorus of Cats) and Malcolm Gets (as Caroline’s illustrator Richard, a buttoned-up bundle of natty neuroses), and though I’m not sure there was a pent-up demand for this release — the show is hardly regarded as a beloved classic, even by those of us who were fans — I’ll be buying it anyway, if only to own a crisp, clear copy of the uproarious 1996 episode in which the priceless Elizabeth Ashley (whose brilliantly fiery dialogue delivery singlehandedly makes last month’s first-season DVD set of “Evening Shade” a worthwhile purchase) shows up and wreaks havoc as Richard’s outlandish mother. If you ever saw it, you know damn well why I’ll never again think of the state of Utah without smiling.

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