Brandon's Buzz

As per usual, January ended markedly stronger than it began musically, and February kicks off with a much-anticipated deluxe edition rerelease of one of the most fabulous, most pivotal albums of the ’80s ever. Dig in:

While I most certainly should have been working, I spent the lion’s share of the day last Saturday geeking out on the fourth season of my old favorite guilty pleasure California Dreams, NBC’s early-’90s smash Saturday morning sitcom whose episodes the marvelous folks at Shout! Factory have been slowing doling out on DVD. Season four’s fifteen episodes are newly available via the Factory’s superb Shout! Select program, which brings less commercial titles such as this to DVD in bare-bones presentations to give the die hard fans access without having to fight the eternally tough battle for shelf space at traditional retail.
(Other offerings in the Select line include seasons of My Two Dads, Simon and Simon, and Rhoda.) And you can best believe this season of Dreams contains more ravishing work from the beyond beautiful Aaron Jackson — on whom I continue to be man enough to cop to harboring a ginormous crush — who, in one of my favorite episodes, “We’ll Always Have Aspen,” runs into a former flame and must navigate anew the treacherous travails of teenage love. (Laugh if you will, but I watched this episode, like,
five times this week! God bless you, Mr. Jackson!)

One of country’s most winning traditionalist voices pauses to recap act one of his charmed career this week, as Joe Nichols compiles volume one of his Greatest Hits. Everything that absolutely positively needs to be here is, from Nichols’ brilliant breakthrough “Brokenheartsville” right up through his recent smash “Gimme That Girl,” although I must ask you, Joe: would it have killed you to toss your biggest fan a bone and swap out one of the less memorable titles here in exchange for “She Only Smokes When She Drinks,”
your magnificent minor hit from 2003? I say it would not have, sir!

One of the most exciting breakthroughs of the past few years has been that of The Script, a marvelous, melodically-inclined ragtag band of photogenic Irish misfits led by the divine Danny O’Donoghue. Their self-titled 2008 debut spun out a pair of global chart-toppers — “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” and “Breakeven” — and hopes are running sky-high for comparable success from the group’s new sophomore effort, Science and Faith. The riveting lead single,
“For the First Time,” is a burgeoning hit at top 40 already, and I don’t even want to fathom an American radio landscape that doesn’t include these guys front and center for years to come.

You must recognize that the driving idea behind Now That’s What I Call the Modern Songbook! is valid and structurally sound: much gets made of the vaunted Great American Songbook, a collection of classic tunes — many if not most of them from the early days of Broadway and/or from the musicals produced during Hollywood’s so-called golden age — which were written and first performed during the first half of the 20th century and whose enduring popularity have made them iconic. But the general notion of the Great American Songbook seems to suggest that great American songs were not written after 1960 or so, and anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows how fabulously fallacious that argument is, and the folks behind Now! have stepped up with a disc of ditties they term “music’s new classics.” The problem, however, becomes evident almost immediately: I take no offense at Maroon 5 taking part in this compilation, but who in blue hell decided that their godawful latest single “Misery” should make the cut over “She Will Be Loved” or even “This Love” (a true pair of music’s new classics)? My current favorite band Train is here, too? Mazel tov, but with “Hey, Soul Sister” instead of “Drops of Jupiter”? Quelle nonsense! Josh Groban’s “Hidden Away” rather than “To Where You Are”? Huh? Luckily, not all of Modern‘s inclusions are so egregiously misjudged, as true new classics from Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, and OneRepublic fill out the remainder of the album’s airspace. (The crazy kids who assembled this disc are also up with two more new compilations: Now That’s What I Call Music! 37 pulls together recent radio hits from Eminem, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift, and the Wal-Mart exclusive Now That’s What I Call R&B! features soul classics from Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and TLC.)

Now this is cause for a deluxe edition: this weekend, the Recording Academy will take a moment to bestow a Grammy trophy upon their latest choice for Album of the Year, and could there possibly be a better time to recall that, in 1989, they handed that very honor to my beloved George Michael‘s incendiary, incredible solo debut effort Faith, a mega-selling multiplatinum triumph which spawned six straight top ten singles — four of them number one smashes — and cemented Michael’s much-deserved status as the boldest, most combustibly brilliant pop star of his time. The buzz on this is strangely mute — and, to be fair, I’ve been sick as a dog the past couple of weeks and haven’t been around to do my part — but King George has, with his typical obsessive ear for detail, personally overseen a massive, painstakingly remastered rerelease of Faith, which has just returned to stores in a two-disc special edition (which includes a handful of rare remixes and b-sides, including the instrumental mix of “Faith” and the a capella take on “Monkey,” which heretofore were only available on their respective twelve-inch vinyl singles), as well as a three-disc deluxe edition (which includes all of the above, as well as a DVD containing all seven of Faith‘s music videos, plus the album’s original twenty-minute electronic press kit and a rare full-length Michael interview which dates back to the album’s original release in the fall of 1987). If you only buy one record this winter, trust me when I tell you, it damn well needs to be this one.

Also noteworthy this week:

• Speaking of the music industry’s highest honor, the annual contenders compilation 2011 Grammy Nominees is in stores now; among those vying for this year’s top awards include Lady Antebellum, Eminem, Train, Paramore, Miranda Lambert, and even those pesky Glee kids.

 

• And while I’m on the subject of Glee, the first half of
  the series’ second season has just debuted on DVD.

 

• A mix of new tunes and old favorites from the one and only Elton John punctuate the original motion picture soundtrack for
  the upcoming animated film Gnomeo and Juliet.

 

• Cult band The Decemberists have just scored their first number one album on the Billboard 200 with their latest effort, The King is Dead.

 

• Ditto Amos Lee, with his fourth studio album, Mission Bell.

 

• Still beautiful: James Blunt — the British wonder boy responsible for “You’re Beautiful,” one of the decade’s defining love songs — returns with his third album, Some Kind of Trouble.

 

• Those krazy Kidz Bop churren are at it again, with volume 19 of their sanitized series of compilations, this latest edition of which features such kid-friendly fare as Flo Rida’s “Club Can’t Handle Me,” Usher’s “DJ Got Us Falling in Love,” and B.o.B.’s “Airplanes.” (We sure have come a long way from “Row Row Row Your Boat,” yeah?)

 

• Singer-songwriter Sam Beam — known professionally as Iron & Wine — returns with his major-label debut, Kiss Each Other Clean.

 

• Legendary alt-rock band Pearl Jam rip through a fair mix of classics and current tunes on their latest effort, Live On Ten Legs.

 

• With folk legends Richard and Linda Thompson as parents,
  Teddy Thompson was fated to be a troubadour, and he does it with expert panache; his latest, Bella, arrives in stores this week.

 

• Ricky Martin‘s latest record, MAS (Musica + Alma + Sexo), is mostly a Spanish-language effort, but it does contain his latest English single, an irresistible duet with Joss Stone called “The Best Thing About Me is You.” (Target has an exclusive deluxe edition of MAS with seven bonus tracks, including a pair of dance mixes and a solo take on “Best Thing.”)

 

• The lovely Corinne Bailey Rae steps up with The Love EP, a five-track adjunct to her sophomore effort from last year, The Sea.

 

• Now that his trip through the aforementioned Great American Songbook has blessedly reached its conclusion, the legendary Rod Stewart presents a single-disc compilation of his journey, on which he picks and chooses favorite cuts from the five albums.

 

• The incredible New England-based singer/songwriter Lori McKenna returns with Lorraine, her first album since 2007’s Unglamorous.

 

• Rock’s favorite Hasidic Jew, Matisyahu, returns to the scene of an earlier triumph with his latest concert effort, Live at Stubb’s, Vol.II.

 

• A new wave of Sony Legacy’s terrific Playlist series of best-of collections has arrived, with discs from Five for Fighting, Soul Asylum,
  Ace of Base, Bowling for Soup, and Boz Scaggs, as well as
  ’80s heroes Mr. Mister, The Romantics, and The Outfield.

 

• A handful of goodies from Hollywoodland, as Best Buy introduces a series of exclusive Blu-Ray debuts, including Geena Davis’ underappreciated 1996 action thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight, Nicolas Cage’s Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas, and Cameron Crowe’s loving ode to the music of his youth, Almost Famous. Wal-Mart steps forward with its own retail exclusive this week, and I say for pure cheese factor, you just can’t beat Pure Country 2: The Gift, a certain-to-be-ham-handed sequel to George Strait’s 1993 film debut. (Strait makes a cameo in this film, but rising country star Katrina Elam does most of the heavy lifting this time around.)

 

• If you happened to catch Nicki Minaj on Saturday Night Live a couple of weekends ago, you surely caught “The Creep,” her hilarious collaboration with Andy Samberg’s comedic group The Lonely Island, and the single has just gone up at iTunes. (Also new on the digital front: “Secret Love,” the tantalizing first taste from In Your Dreams, the forthcoming latest solo album — a collaboration with former Eurythmic Dave Stewart — from the staggeringly brilliant Stevie Nicks.)

names dropped with reckless abandon: "California Dreams", "Glee", "Saturday Night Live", Aaron Jackson, Ace of Base, Alicia Keys, Amos Lee, Andy Samberg, Aretha Franklin, B.o.B., Bowling for Soup, Boz Scaggs, Bruno Mars, Cameron Crowe, Corinne Bailey Rae, Danny O'Donoghue, Dave Stewart, Elton John, Eminem, Eurythmics, Five for Fighting, Flo Rida, Geena Davis, George Michael, George Strait, Iron & Wine, James Blunt, James Brown, Joe Nichols, Josh Groban, Joss Stone, Katrina Elam, Katy Perry, Lady Antebellum, Linda Thompson, Lori McKenna, Maroon 5, Marvin Gaye, Matisyahu, Miranda Lambert, Mr. Mister, Nicki Minaj, Nicolas Cage, Norah Jones, OneRepublic, Paramore, Pearl Jam, Richard Thompson, Ricky Martin, Rod Stewart, Sam Beam, Soul Asylum, Stevie Nicks, Taylor Swift, Teddy Thompson, The Decemberists, The Lonely Island, The Outfield, The Romantics, The Script, TLC, Train