look for the girl with the broken smile
(or: december 9 — a thumbnail sketch)
posted at 11:36 pm by brandon in tuesdays in the record store with brandon
A major computer malfunction has kept the Buzz inactive for the past few days, but we’re back and better than ever, just in time for this week’s record store report. It’s another slow one out there, kids, but there are some gems hidden in the rough.
Continuing in their ongoing quest to sucker us into purchasing the exact same material — these guys have as many live albums as they do studio ones! — as often as they possibly can, those crafty fools of Maroon 5 unleash their latest project Call and Response this week. A collection of remixes, Response features radically reworked versions of the band’s massive radio hits and well-loved album tracks, and while Sherry Ann will testify that I’m all for a tasteful remix, I’m just not quite sure the world needs to be able to dance to “She Will Be Loved” (as masterfully heart-wrenching a ballad as has been recorded this decade) or “Better That We Break” or “Goodnight Goodnight.” (Does that make me crazy?) We’ll see.
Jukebox, her terrific album from last spring, featured twelve absorbing covers and was capped by a take on Joni Mitchell’s classic “Blue” that rivals only Sarah McLachlan’s for its raw, gripping power, and this week, Cat Power takes six more tracks which were recorded during the Jukebox sessions and releases them in a special EP called Dark End of the Street. With her own versions of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” and Otis Redding’s devastating “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” as well as the oft-covered James Carr title track, this should be equally stellar.
Once upon a time, she was among the brightest stars in the entertainment galaxy, with a preternatural talent — both in front of the camera and the microphone — and a hypnotic beauty to burn. A pair of flop albums — one deservedly so (2002’s Full Moon) and one decidedly not (2004’s Afrodisiac) — derailed her progress for a time, as did a well-publicized automobile accident, but Brandy is firmly back in control and, with her fifth album Human, ready to remind us all why we were so taken with her in the first place. The incredible first single “Right Here (Departed)” is already a radio smash (which the Buzz humbly predicted months ago), and would seem to be a harbinger of only good things to come. Welcome back, lady. You’ve been missed.
The week’s marquee release: a riveting and stunningly gorgeous ten-disc set entitled Revolutions in Sound, which gloriously celebrates The First Fifty Years of
Warner Bros. Records and pulls together — mostly in chronological order — a breathtaking cross-section of highlights from the last half-century of popular music. Pretty much anybody who’s anybody can be found on this collection, and more often than not, they show up with their most beloved hit in tow (James Taylor with “Fire and Rain,” for instance, or Van Halen with “Jump,” or even my darling Michelle Branch with her brilliant breakthrough “All You Wanted”), and the entire experience is a dazzling melange of offerings from all across the musical spectrum, with little regard given to classification. (You want eclectic? Give your attention to disc seven, which finds Dwight Yoakam, David Lee Roth, Elvis Costello, George Harrison, Erasure, and Dolly Parton all sharing the same chunk of real estate.) Music world, take note: boys, this is how you compile a comprehensive box set.
