Brandon's Buzz

All kinds of musical blasts from the past are on tap this week as August draws to a close. Nothing much earth-shattering here, but there is quite a bit to have fun with here. Take a look:

 

They may not hold sway on the charts and at pop radio the way they once did in their respective heydays — the late ’80s for the ladies, with unforgettable smashes like their 1987 classic “Alone” and their turn-of-the-decade touchstone “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You,” and the late ’90s for the guys, with their twin triumphs from 1998, “Iris” and “Slide” — but they are responsible for some of the most-loved music of all time, and this week, the Wilson sisters — you know ’em better as Heart — and Johnny Rzeznik and his Goo Goo Dolls each return this week from extended hiatuses with hot new recordings. Heart is back with Red Velvet Car, their first album since 2004’s Jupiter’s Darling, and the tender lead single “Hey You” is already getting a surprisingly warm reception at adult contemporary radio. Meanwhile, aside from a terrific pair of hits collections, we’ve heard nary a peep from Rzeznik and his band since their 2006 effort Let Love In, but the Dolls are back on the playground with their ninth album, Something for the Rest of Us, and early word has it that the record is a tight, typically polished collection of tunes designed to keep their fans — a group in which I proudly include myself — happy and hungry for more.

 

 

Yet another abfab new series of low-priced hits compilations, called simply Icon, begins a ginormous rollout this week with spectacularly-assembled discs from some of my all-time favorite artists, including Bryan Adams (the undisputed master of the movie ballad), Trisha Yearwood (the undisputed queen of ’90s crunchy radio), and the inimitable Gladys Knight (the undisputed mistress of stunning soul). The Adams disc, in particular, is worthy of your attention, as it splits its time fairly evenly between the necessary hits (“Summer of ’69” and “Everything I Do,” of course) and the lesser-known highlights of his more recent work (“Here I Am” and the shockingly sexy “The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me is You,” which shoulda been a major hit in the summer of, um, ’96). There’s not as much as a wasted millisecond on the Yearwood set, every last one of whose twelve tracks was a top ten smash at country radio, and if you haven’t heard some of these songs in a while, I’ll predict you’ll be stunned at how fresh and fun they all — but most especially “She’s in Love with the Boy” (one of the great debut singles of all time) and “Walkaway Joe” (Yearwood’s knockout duet with her childhood hero Don Henley) — still are. And beyond the fact that it is a magnificent, brilliantly eclectic collection of music, the Knight disc is noteworthy for the fact that it pulls together onto the same swath of real estate, for the first time ever, a handful of Knight’s iconic ’60s and ’70s work with the Pips (“Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Neither One of Us,” but, sadly, not “Midnight Train to Georgia,” the inexcusable absence of which is this set’s most evident flaw) with Knight’s later triumphs (1987’s slinky smash “Love Overboard” and “License to Kill,” her riveting 1990 contribution to the canon of James Bond movie themes, to say nothing of “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” her thrilling 1994 duet with Vince Gill). Also a part of this amazing initial rollout of the Icon series are wildly varied discs from Neil Diamond, Nirvana, KISS, Janet Jackson, Diana Ross & the Supremes, ABBA, The Cranberries, and the aforementioned Vince Gill.

Also noteworthy this week:

• Also on the best-of front: the latest additions to Sony Legacy’s terrific triple-length Essential 3.0 series come from Simon & Garfunkel, Gloria Estefan, the glorious Patti LaBelle, and the, uh, not-so-glorious Weird Al Yankovic.

 

• Much-beloved California duo The Weepies are back with their latest album, Be My Thrill, another collection of acoustically wondrous tunes.

 

• Fresh off of his Academy Award win for his gorgeous theme song from the film Crazy Heart, Ryan Bingham pops back up with his latest album, Junky Star.

 

• And finally, Now That’s What I Call Music! 35 contains recent radio smashes from the likes of Lady GaGa (A’s beloved “Alejandro”), Katy Perry (the inescapable “California Gurls”), La Roux (the irresistible “Bulletproof”), Travie McCoy & Bruno Mars (the annoyingly whiny “Billionaire”), and Carrie Underwood (the rambunctious sing-along “Undo It”).

names dropped with reckless abandon: A, ABBA, Ann Wilson, Bruno Mars, Bryan Adams, Carrie Underwood, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Don Henley, Gladys Knight, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Gloria Estefan, Goo Goo Dolls, Janet Jackson, Johnny Rzeznik, Katy Perry, KISS, La Roux, Lady GaGa, Nancy Wilson, Neil Diamond, Nirvana, Patti LaBelle, Ryan Bingham, Simon and Garfunkel, The Cranberries, The Weepies, Travie McCoy, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill, Weird Al Yankovic