Brandon's Buzz

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: in the wild madness that is the contemporary music scene, the toughest hurdle to cross must be crafting a stellar follow-up after your debut scores a bullseye. (Like, for instance, aren’t you just dying to see what fresh magic The Fray and Amy Winehouse and Snow Patrol are going to conjure to try to top their initial breakthroughs? The old saying — that one about “you have your whole life to write and record your first album, and you have six months to a year to write and record your second” — really is true, and some artists — like David Gray, who followed up his stunning starburst White Ladder with the even stronger A New Day at Midnight; or Train, whose magnificent thunderbolt “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)” blasted them right past the dreaded sophomore slump — navigate that pressure more gracefully than others.)

Add to the former category San Diego rock band Augustana, whose blisteringly brilliant 2005 debut album All the Stars and Boulevards was one for the time capsule. Led by the surprise radio smash “Boston” — I defy you to name me another top 40 radio staple from the last decade that has no chorus whatsoever — and buffered by one boffo song after another, from the sensationally fiery opener “Mayfield” to the devastating album closer “Coffee and Cigarettes” (to say nothing of the socko title track, already on the shortlist of this new century’s very best singles), Boulevards was (and remains) an intoxicating, intricately constructed marvel.

The band (led by the extraordinary Dan Layus, whose wise voice always seems to know just when to slump and just when to soar) has just released Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt, its second full-length effort and quite a worthy successor to Boulevards. While it lacks outright even one individual track that matches the intense power of any of Boulevards‘ MVPs (though the sinewy “Hey Now” and the mournful “Fire” each come awfully damn close), Can’t Squared overflows with the same brand of glorious, bittersweet piano-based melodies that put these guys on the map three years ago. It’s a don’t-fix-what-ain’t-broke triumph for the ultra-talented Layus — for whom stardom seems absolutely predestined — and his comrades, who seem to be just one more radio hit away from the big time and who, at worst, have just proven definitively that their masterful debut was no fluke.

names dropped with reckless abandon: Amy Winehouse, Augustana, Dan Layus, David Gray, Snow Patrol, The Fray, Train