Brandon's Buzz

As the industry recovers from a Swift-sized hangover, November opens with a bit of a whimper this week. Enjoy this respite of sorts; the action picks up again next week:

One of last year’s strongest efforts receives its inevitable upgrade this week, as Train‘s terrific fifth album — the sterling Save Me, San Francisco — returns to the new release wall with its so-called Golden Gate Edition. The new deluxe update features a pair of previously available tracks (“The Finish Line,” which premiered as a one-off digital single in conjunction with the Winter Olympic games, and “Half Moon Bay,” which came as an exclusive bonus track with the original digital release of SM, SF last fall), as well as a new holiday offering (“Shake Up Christmas,” soon to be the centerpiece of a massive new yuletide-inspired Coca-Cola campaign), a bizarro uptempo remix of the album’s sweet closing track “Marry Me,” an alternate mix of the record’s best track (the propulsive “Parachute”), and a hilarious cover of Rihanna’s classic smash “Umbrella,” on which the friskily fearless Pat Monahan proves he has one hell of a sense of humor to accompany his pristine pipes.

Also noteworthy this week:

• Which of these things is not like the other? Phase two of the
  spectacular new series of best-ofs bearing the Icon moniker rolls out this week with new collections from No Doubt, Puddle of Mudd,
  The Oak Ridge Boys, The Statler Brothers, Barry White, and, uh, Jessica Andrews, the ’90s teenybopper — shades of Taylor Swift, check it — who scored a couple of country hits before falling off the face of the earth. (Don’t get me wrong: I quite enjoyed her work, for what it was, but I would hardly label her an “icon.”)

 

• Rock legend Neil Diamond throws his own hat into the covers album fray with Dreams, on which he puts his own stamp on material from the likes of Leonard Cohen, The Beatles, and even Gladys Knight.

 

• Mariah Carey offers up a sequel to her smash 1994 holiday effort
  with the new Merry Christmas II You.

 

• Country upstart Jason Aldean hits the ground running with his fourth album My Kinda Party, which includes a much-buzzed-about duet with Kelly Clarkson.

 

• Need a good laugh this week? Don’t miss Punk Goes Pop, Vol. 3,
  on which up-and-coming rock bands take a stab at recent radio hits from Lady Antebellum, Katy Perry, Lady GaGa, and others.

 

• Coming off of his smash collaboration with Usher, Miami-based rapper Pitbull returns with his latest full-length effort, Armando.

 

• Country superstar Brad Paisley offers a twist on the standard best-of set with the new double-length Hits Alive, which includes one disc of Paisley’s greatest hits in studio form and another in concert.

 

• Rock band Good Charlotte return with their fifth album, Cardiology.

 

• Upon its original release in 1996, Weezer‘s high-profile sophomore album Pinkerton was a devastating flop, but over the past decade and a half, it has quietly gained its own devoted cult following, and this week, the band re-releases the record with a new double-disc deluxe edition which includes a handful of live tracks alongside fan-favorite b-sides and bonus cuts.

 

• New tracks from Leona Lewis, Macy Gray, and the film’s star
  Janet Jackson highlight the original motion picture soundtrack for
  Tyler Perry’s upcoming epic For Colored Girls.

 

• Trip-hop’s wonderful wackydoo Imogen Heap chronicles
  the making of her latest album with the new DVD
  Everything In Between: The Story of Ellipse.

 

• ’80s megastars Huey Lewis and the News reunite for Soulsville,
  their first album since 2001’s fabulous Plan B.

 

• His suicide was one of the great senseless tragedies of the past decade, but for a new generation who desperately needs to be made aware of his fantastic brand of folk-rock, a new collection serves beautifully as An Introduction to Elliott Smith.

 

• Finally, the thirteen-episode debut season of ABC’s brilliantly pulpy V,
  a thrill-a-millisecond reboot of the classic ’80s miniseries, featuring electric, powerhouse performances from Elizabeth Mitchell (good) and Morena Baccarin (evil), arrives on DVD this week. (I don’t generally go for this kind of thing, but trust me, this thing rocked the whole house; the series returns for season two on January 4, 2011.)

names dropped with reckless abandon: Barry White, Brad Paisley, Elizabeth Mitchell, Elliott Smith, Gladys Knight, Good Charlotte, Huey Lewis and the News, Imogen Heap, Janet Jackson, Jason Aldean, Jessica Andrews, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Antebellum, Lady GaGa, Leona Lewis, Leonard Cohen, Macy Gray, Mariah Carey, Morena Baccarin, Neil Diamond, No Doubt, Pat Monahan, Pitbull, Puddle of Mudd, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, The Beatles, The Oak Ridge Boys, The Statler Brothers, Train, Tyler Perry, Usher, Weezer