Brandon's Buzz

At first glance, his career may well seem star-crossed: the youngest son of a man who is widely regarded to be the planet’s finest songwriter decides to stake his own claim on his father’s profession. The son forms a band, stumbles more or less across instant success (give or take an unfocused yet promising debut album) by tossing top 40 radio one of the smartest tandems of smash singles the format has ever seen. The son — whose devilishly smoldering (if slightly off-kilter) good looks only serve to cement his status as a lustworthy rock star — lands on every relevant magazine cover in creation, and the band, showered by now with gushes and with Grammys, seems to be riding a unstoppable rocketship straight to the top.

Except: in a brilliantly faulty judgment call, the band waits four years to write and record the follow-up to their shattering breakthrough, by which time the gurus of pop culture have deemed their style of music — so ubiquitous in their brief heyday — to be unforgivably gauche. The album fails to sell, and so do the next two (despite a handful of killer tunes contained therein), and the band, who had made their pilgrimage to the pinnacle seem so damned simple, realizes just how imperceptibly fleeting celebrity can be.

The Wallflowers are far from dead (or so they swear), but the band’s lead singer Jakob Dylan (son of Bob, natch) has just released his first solo project, a spare and haunting album called Seeing Things that is built around an acoustic guitar and, more importantly, around Dylan’s reedy yet undeniably affecting voice, an instrument that sold five million copies of its band’s second CD — 1996’s classic Bringing Down the Horse — a decade ago solely by transforming forlorn songs about homelessness (the mind-blowingly fine “6th Avenue Heartache,” which featured a to-die-for harmony vocal from head Crow Counter Adam Duritz) and suicide (the monumental “One Headlight”) into radio-friendly pop fodder.

The slight hint of resignation that now emanates from his vocals seems to suggest that Dylan is perfectly at peace to be respected as a songwriter and nothing more. (And, maybe just maybe, that was his goal all the while.) And although it’s sometimes too quiet and too unassuming, Seeing Things is a striking collection of songs from a man who long ago proved that although fame — particularly the sudden variety of same — is transient, talent isn’t.

Believe me here if nowhere else, singers: when gay folks fall madly in love with you, you’re in like Flynn, baby. We are positively undying in our loyalty and devotion to your craft and to your output. We support you when no one else will give you the time of day (how else to explain why you crazy gals Taylor Dayne and Nicki French still have careers?), we love you even when you lose your marbles (and, in some cases, because you lose them, correct, Liza?), and we stay at your side through thick and thin, through addiction and sobriety, through brilliance and boredom.

In honor of Pride month, a prodigious passel of inarguable gay icons have just released new projects for us to devour gratefully. Allow the Buzz to guide you along a tour of these records, replete with snap judgments as to their worthiness and/or lack thereof. (Believe me here, as well: your crazy Uncle Brandon will never knowingly mislead you!)

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All the way back to her stint as the lead singer of the quintessential ’80s band ‘Til Tuesday, I’ve generally been able to take or leave her music — though her 1995 breakthrough “That’s Just What You Are” remains a touchstone (as does her bravura work on 1999’s brilliant Magnolia soundtrack), and I’ve got a twenty dollar bill that says her interpretation of “The Scientist” (from the deluxe edition of her 2004 album Lost in Space) is stronger and more profound than Coldplay’s — but it’s impossible not to admire Aimee Mann‘s incredible moxie and flippant panache. (Or — on a totally shallow note — her cooler-than-cool husband, the woefully underappreciated Michael Penn.)

Singularly unimpressed with the overgrown machinery of the music business’ major label system, Mann struck out on her own in the late ’90s after two acclaimed efforts for Geffen Records stiffed huge. Turned out to be the smartest move Mann ever made: this week brings us @#%&*! Smilers, Mann’s sixth do-it-yourself effort (counting a concert recording and a Christmas album) and the one with arguably the highest profile. No major stylistic shifts here; if you dug her before, you’ll dig her now, and if she annoyed you before, well…. Regardless, there can be no discounting her accomplishments as a true maverick. Way the hell before it was tres chic to do so, Mann was brave enough to blaze a trail that some of the biggest names in the business — Yorke, Amos, Reznor, to name but a few — would end up following her down.

All of twenty when he broke through seven years ago with his cocksure summer smash “Fill Me In,” super-suave Brit Craig David is back to take another stab at conquering America. His brilliant 2001 debut Born to Do It launched a trio of radio hits (the terrific “7 Days” and the middling “Walking Away” being the other two) and seemed to herald the arrival of a monumental new talent.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. Lead single “What’s Your Flava?” managed to cause a minor ripple, but David’s 2002 poorly-promoted follow-up Slicker Than Your Average was rushed and sounded like it, and barely went gold despite his debut’s platinum-plus triumph. And minus a stateside release of any kind, 2005’s The Story Goes fared even worse.

But undeterred, David soldiers on. Built around a sizzling David Bowie sample, the spankin’ new club smash “Hot Stuff (Let’s Dance)” beautifully teases Trust Me, which manages to capture all the sexy fun of Born but which also bespeaks the wisdom that only years of dizzying success and wrenching failure can provide. Fewer folks have ever deserved more a second shot at superstardom.