Brandon's Buzz

Delta Rae — “Morning Comes” (from Carry the Fire) —

Not since Kathleen Edwards tore into town with her brilliant breakthrough “Six O’Clock News” — “she says her baby’s a failer / and she don’t want you calling . . .” — nearly a decade ago has anyone dared to put forth such a potently probing, painfully etched trailer trash tragedy. (Also worth checking out: the stunning acoustic mix of “Morning” which appears on Fire‘s digital-exclusive deluxe edition, and which features a bone-chilling four-part harmony that really punches up not only the horror but the hope emanating from the stark story being told here.)

The Lumineers — “Ho Hey” (from The Lumineers) —

Imagine Dragons — “It’s Time” (from Night Visions) —

I’ve seen it happen time and again over the course of my lifetime, but I still never fail to be amused whenever the geniuses who program Top 40 radio in this country suddenly wake the hell up and remember that crowd-pleasing, foot-stomping pop music — which is to say, not homogenized hip-hop and not sound-alike alt-rock — is exactly and exclusively what they do best. That Grammy grubber Adele picked the lock last year with her instant classic kiss-off jam “Rolling in the Deep,” and then those box-busting punks fun. and Gotye tore the gate plumb off its hinges with their infectiously brilliant breakthrough smashes’ year-long assault on the airwaves. Upon whom, now, should we look to carry this torch of momentum into the fall? Bet on these two buzzworthy bands, both making some serious noise and itching for a breakout.

Building on the crossover success laid down by Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers’ warm debut record is a rustic, rollicking force, aided mightily by lead singer Wesley Schultz’s raspy ringer of a voice. (Visualize a more refined take on The Avett Brothers, if whichever Avett brother who does the singing in that ramshackle outfit actually had the ability to stay on pitch.) Meanwhile, mainstream radio has thus far been inexplicably slow to hop aboard the Dragons bandwagon, but seeing as how their pounding, frisky lead single (love that mandolin!) just got the Glee treatment (via a wobbly rendition from the usually impeccable Darren Criss in last week’s season premiere), one would think it’s only a matter of, uh, time. (Isn’t it?)

Whitney Houston & Jordin Sparks — “Celebrate”
(from Sparkle [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]) —

So, sure, you’re likely never gonna hear anyone argue that this is the finest three-and-one-half minutes Miss Whitney ever loaned her pipes to (or, argue that it’s even that great a tune, to boot). But at the end of this scorching summer, in which we mark with a joy that is equal parts bitter and sweet the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” — which still lands high on my list of the ten best pure pop songs of all time — if this is what I have to sit through to get one last lingering taste of Houston’s magnificently miraculous voice, I consider that a pittance to pay.

R.E.M. — “Man on the Moon” (from Automatic for the People) —

Please forgive the tardiness of my reaction to this, as A and I have spent a whirlwind few days in Connecticut and in New York City, and I’ve scarcely had five consecutive minutes with which to blog, but I was saddened to hear of Neil Armstrong’s passing on Saturday. Several years back, I wrote a short story in which Mr. Armstrong himself was something of a recurring character, and in which his 1969 moon landing was a seminal event in the lives of two teenage boys staring up at the stars from the Alabama Gulf Coast. (A visual recreation of this story can be found here.)

I have a sneaking suspicion, after all that you managed to do and see while drawing breath on this plane, that heaven might just be a bit anticlimactic for you, Mr. Armstrong. You nonetheless taught us all with your rocket-fueled flights of fancy that fantasy can be reality, and that reality’s boundaries are only as firm as our imaginations set them to be. May you rest in permanent peace, Neil.

Billie Myers — “Return to Sender (Am I Here Yet?)” (from Vertigo) —

“Sitting around in my imagination /
using someone else’s logic for loose change. . . /
Well, the speed of light isn’t always fast enough /
so could you hurry up and get another life, if you please. . . ?”

Joss Stone — “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye”
(from The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2) —

There are probably a hundred thousand reasons why the stunningly gifted Stone has never fully made good — neither commercially nor creatively — on the potent promise set forth by her earth-shaking 2003 breakthrough record The Soul Sessions and its soul-filled smash “Fell in Love with a Boy” (a funked-up gender-bent take on The White Stripes’ instant classic “Fell in Love with a Girl”). Surely not least among those reasons: it’s just freakin’ hard to find songs, any songs, that match up perfectly with Stone’s difficult-to-classify sound and do proper justice to her booming, expansive singing voice (with which she attempts to smother and suffocate the songs she chooses to tackle much more often than is necessary). So sending Joss wading back into the Sessions waters for a sequel — not to mention reteaming her with producer Steve Greenberg, the nifty knob-twister who made the original Sessions such an unexpected delight — feels like an incredibly smart idea. And Stone shines like a diamond throughout, but especially here on the album’s closer, a simple ’60s standard that cowboy legend Eddy Arnold sent to number one some forty-plus years ago and that country star Neal McCoy had quite a big hit with in the mid-’90s. Playing it atypically cool here, with a restrained and riveting performance that starts out at delicious and only grows more tantalizing with each passing note, Stone finally returns to her sweet spot, relishing the moment with a delicate, dazzling grace.

John Mayer — “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967”
(from Born and Raised) —

Mayer’s fifth studio album might be a tad too pensive and persistently sleepy (particularly in its heavy second half, where his ponderous mea culpa confessionals tend to blur together), but Born is certainly not without its charms, and none more enjoyable than this story song — one of the first such constructions that Mayer has attempted in his decade-long career — with a deceptively basic limerick-like rhyme scheme (which, oddly enough, helps keep the tune from devolving into a hokey hunk of schmaltzy claptrap) and an ambiguous ending that allows the listener to decide for him or herself the protagonist’s ultimate fate. (Whether “Walt” is nothing more than a compellingly clever allegory for Mayer’s own life over the last couple of years — during which time he ducked out of the spotlight’s unforgiving glare and leapt upon the first bus to Montana following a series of staggeringly stupid and painfully public open-mouth-permanently-lodge-foot comments and quips about his sexual proclivities and preferences — I’ll leave for folks more curious than me about nailing down such details to discuss and debate. Nonetheless, it helps to be reminded (again and again and again and again), does it not, that we are ever but one resplendent triumph away from redemption, and that, sometimes, it is exclusively and only the craziest of our dreams to which we should pay any heed.)

Roxette — “Opportunity Nox” (from The Pop Hits) —

My majestic Marie Fredriksson was (temporarily) sidelined by a debilitating brain tumor roughly a decade ago, but the unflappably brilliant Per Gessle carried on anyhow, and didn’t miss a blazing beat without his magnificent musical better half when he crafted this glam, slammin’ sweatbox of a single, a pure (vo)code red on dancefloors the world over, and as gloriously grand a tasty treat as anything this duo — most sincerely, the Buzz’s vote for most enchanting, exhilarating pop band of the last half-century (dreadful sorry, Arctic Monkeys) — ever conjured up in their late-’80s chart-busting heyday.

Emeli Sandé (with Naughty Boy) — “Wonder”
(from Our Version of Events) —

Rebecca Ferguson — “Nothing’s Real But Love” (from Heaven) —

Adele’s runaway smash album 21 just spent its seventy-fifth consecutive week securely ensconced in the Billboard 200 chart’s top ten, and what fresh hell hath her Grammy-gouging triumph wrought? Record companies worldwide are now turning over every last British pebble hoping against hope to run across the next one of her. And whaddaya know: a pair of compelling contenders have stepped forward this summer, patiently laying in wait for a breakout of their own. Keep a firm eye peeled on the staggering Scottish lass Sandé, whose dazzling debut effort Events — a wondrous, deeply melodic epic that comes off as an incomprehensibly brilliant cross between the best of Alicia Keys and Coldplay — stands alongside Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball as my favorite album from 2012’s first half. I’m not quite so keen on the uneven first full record from Ferguson (the runner-up a couple of years back on the U.K.’s The X Factor), but man, did she pop out of the box with a dynamite introductory single, a blah lyric that Miss Rebecca — who sangs, honey, with pure sweet soul, like Amy, Aretha, and Annie all rolled into one stunning set of powerhouse pipes — delivers as though Rilke himself wrote it. Love’s real, to be sure, but bracing talent is pretty real, too, and these two young ladies got it. In spades.

Gym Class Heroes (featuring Ryan Tedder) — “The Fighter”
(from The Papercut Chronicles II) —

Now that the cauldron is lit — the creative process of which action was easily the highlight of director Danny Boyle’s otherwise oddly muted (if not downright droll) Opening Ceremony event, a massive comedown from the stunning spectacle that kicked off the 2008 Games in Beijing — and the initial contests are underway, the Buzz officially has Olympic fever. It’s a fever that only grows more intense whenever I run across this hopelessly inspirational tune, the smashing video for which features the extraordinary John Orozco, the Bronx-born reigning national champion in men’s gymnastics who is set to score a handful of shiny hardware in London over the next couple of weeks. Over the course of the last few Games, most of the spotlight’s white-hot glare has justly tended to fall on Team USA’s female gymnasts, but hear me when I tell you that, at least on paper, we are fielding the strongest and most roundly talented quintet of young men — including past Olympian Jonathan Horton, Cuban-born sensation Danell Leyva, blue-eyed cutie Jake Dalton, and that shaky-ankled wonder boy Sam Mikulak — that we have ever placed on the world stage. As ever, stiff competition looms from China and Japan, but with the team competition beginning later today (and concluding Monday, setting up what looks to be the most hotly-contested individual all-around race in memory later in the week), I hereby predict you’ll quickly see that these five men belong squarely in the middle of the conversation for gold. (Best of luck, boys; I know I’m gonna drive my beloved nuts with it over the next few days, but I’ll be savoring every last second of your superlative brilliance.)

Best Coast — “The Only Place” (from The Only Place) —

So many musical love letters to the mysterious magic (and magnetic allure) of the Golden State, and whereas Joni Mitchell made hers bittersweetly poetic, and Dre and 2Pac made theirs an on-and-poppin’ party jam for the ages, Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno travel a more nakedly straightforward route, taking special care to punch up the peerless practicality of the paradise life. (To wit: “We wake up / with the sun in our eyes / it’s no surprise / that we get so much done!”) A perfectly harmless summer treat which I hereby predict my Cali-‘shipping boyfriend is gonna slurp up with an overflowin’ ladle.

W.G. Snuffy Walden & Stewart Levin — “Theme from thirtysomething”
(from thirtysomething [Music from the Television Series]) —

Today would be my thirty-sixth birthday, and while I pray I never become as whiny and irritating as the ever-yapping self-involved yuppies on ABC’s beloved late-’80s drama series, I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that the idea that I’m now officially closer to forty than I am to thirty doesn’t chill me straight to the bone. (True, you’re only as old as you feel and age ain’t nothin’ but a number and blah blah blah, but that number can sometimes be awfully daunting if you stare at it from the wrong angle.) Still, among the lessons to take away from the tragic events of this weekend must surely be: we gotta embrace all that this day holds, and live it, fully and completely. (Many, many thanks for all the birthday wishes on all of the Brandon’s Buzz’s various social media platforms; they’ve all made me smile, and I deeply appreciate the sentiments.)

Wilson Phillips — “Get Together” (from California) —

I’m finally getting caught up with these girls’ batshit wacky reality series Still Holding On (which ran for seven incalculably crazy episodes earlier this year on TV Guide Network, and which has introduced me to my new favorite catchphrase, courtesy of über-Christian Chynna Phillips, who uttered some variation on it in every single installment: “When the Lord is on board, anything is possible!”). The series has been infinitely more entertaining than the new record — Dedicated, a collection of covers of their collective parents’ (the founding members of The Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas) most memorable material — the series was ostensibly designed to help promote, and that has sent me scurrying back in time to 2004 and to Dedicated‘s soothing, sterling progenitor, a terrific tribute to the music that made southern California the mecca for an entire generation of war-weary artists, musicians, and soul siblings searching for the promise of peace half a century ago.