Brandon's Buzz

Nothing major out there this week as August arrives in earnest, but a couple of midlist sleepers pop up on the new release wall, and the artists behind them are absolutely the real deal. Dig in:

• A’ll be pleased as punch to learn that his current heroine Lady GaGa is back this week with The Remix, a collection of ten extended dance and club mixes of her hit singles.

 

• Indie rock icons Arcade Fire return with their latest, The Suburbs.

 

• Still talkin’ to angels: two decades past the release of their mega-platinum debut, The Black Crowes are back with Croweology,
  a double-length acoustic celebration of their survival.

 

• One of my all-time favorite foreign chicks is the delightfully odd
  Katie Melua, who takes a bit of a left turn this week, teaming up with Madonna’s old crony William Orbit for her fourth album, The House.

 

• I find him whiny, shallow, and painfully pretentious, but his music obviously strikes a chord with someone, and for that person, John Vesely — who records under the name of Secondhand Serenade — offers up his latest effort, Hear Me Now.

 

• And finally: he first gained national attention in 2006 as one of the contestants in CBS’ ill-fated Idol knockoff Rock Star: INXS, which
  sought to find a new lead singer for the venerable Australian band.
  (The time-stopping cover of R.E.M.’s classic smash “Losing My Religion” that he crafted for the series remains one of the most chilling and compelling pieces of television that I have ever witnessed.) Now, four years later, the blisteringly brilliant Ryan Star steps into the spotlight as a true recording artist with his hotly-anticipated major label debut 11:59.

Tasmin Archer — “One More Good Night With the Boys”
(from Bloom) —

If the conversation at any future gathering ever veers toward Brit chicks who should have become much bigger stars stateside, Tasmin’s name had better be the first one to come flying from your mouth. A brilliant melange of Seal and Sade (the artists to whom she has most often been compared over the years), possessing the innately crystalline beauty of her music combined with the omnipresent social conscience of his, the astonishing Archer threw a continuing series of bold swings throughout the ’90s (taking swipes at industry, commerce, and religion; doing Elvis Costello better than Elvis Costello; proving definitively that pop music doesn’t have to be by necessity an intellectual wasteland), and with this gorgeous glimpse at masculinity in the modern world, she ended up topping even her own elegant ambitions. A total triumph.