Brandon's Buzz

Another jam-packed week on tap at your local record store, as two of music’s brightest talents return with much-anticipated new projects. Too bad only one of same manages to soar:

As part of a duo with his twin brother Evan, he scored a pleasantly melodic radio hit called “Crazy for This Girl” in late 2000, but despite a keen sense of his abilities as a vocalist and a couple of strong records, it seemed as though long-term commercial success in the music business was just not in the cards for Jaron Lowenstein. But not so fast: using the moniker Jaron and the Long Road to Love, Lowenstein is back in the game this week with
Getting Dressed in the Dark, his debut album as a solo act. The first single “Pray for You” — a hilarious kiss-off dedicated to a gal who clearly done this boy ten kinds of wrong — is a burgeoning smash at country radio, and, if his Facebook updates are any accurate indication, Jaron sure is a charmer. This could be a sleeper hit of the highest order.

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An insanely busy workweek has come and gone, and I am now charged with composing the longest record store report in Brandon’s Buzz history. Luckily for verbose ol’ me, I feel that I am equal to this challenge. To wit:

 

Those canny folks at Now! are back on the block with a pair of new singles collections, as
Now That’s What I Call Music! 34 compiles a cross-section of recent radio smashes from the likes of, among others, red-hot Lady Antebellum (the wistful “American Honey”), OneRepublic (“All the Right Moves,” so deliciously epic), The Script (“Breakeven,” a worthy breakthrough for this terrific and too-long-ignored band), and Miranda Lambert (the tremendously moving “The House That Built Me,” the most played song at country radio this week); and the crassly manipulative Now That’s What I Call the USA! pulls together a handful of so-called patriotic country tunes, some of which absolutely fit the mold (Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” say, or Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Some Gave All”), and others of which are, for this occasion, only marginally appropriate at best (fine though they certainly are, Eric Church’s “Guys Like Me” and Rascal Flatts’ “Fast Cars and Freedom” don’t exactly fill me with the urge to salute the nearest flag, if you know what I mean). Being, however, from the same group of people who, a few months ago, seemed to believe that The Fray’s incendiary “You Found Me” actually glorifies (as opposed to excoriates) God, I s’pose this scattershot set is right on par.

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One of Sherry Ann’s harem of future husbands helps to kick off June in inimitable style, and had I been using my noodle last weekend, I would have commissioned her to compose the text celebrating that event. Instead, you’re stuck with me, and I s’pose I’ll leave it to you to discern whether or not that’s a good thing:

Give Clay Aiken this much credit: he certainly never backs down from a challenge. Despite several moments of genuine brilliance — laugh if you must, but “Invisible” and “Run to Me” (the standout tracks from his middling 2003 debut Measure of a Man) are both terrific tunes — Daddy Clive’s quest to turn Aiken into the next great pop star was a wholesale failure, and the attempt to refashion him as a baby Barry — replete with Manilow’s maddening penchant for godawfully inappropriate remakes! — fared even worse. And yet, through it all, Aiken has rolled with the punches, displaying an admirable grit and tenacity in the process. And now he’s back, and coming at mainstream success from yet another angle: on his fourth album (and first for new label Decca), Tried and True, Aiken now appears to be channeling his inner Bobby Darin by unleashing upon us an entire collection of big-band-era covers. (To prove he is serious about this, he even dares to tackle “Mack the Knife”!) Now, to be fair, I’ll disclose I haven’t heard as much as a note of this record, and it may well be triumphant from stem to stern, but just from scanning the tracklist, I see the precise same problem that sunk A Thousand Different Ways — Aiken’s ill-fated 2006 project — which is that he has chosen a series of tunes — in this case, titles like “Unchained Melody,” “Suspicious Minds,” and “Crying” (the lattermost of which is presented as a duet with the peerless Linda Eder, whom, one can only surmise, must have been promised the moon in exchange for these precious few moments of her time and talent) — upon whose shattering originals he cannot possibly improve. We shall see.

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‘Twas a bitch of a week, so all apologies for the record store report’s lateness this week. But better late than never: May comes to a close with a handful of highly-anticipated comebacks, along with a soundtrack that is sure to stand among the year’s most popular. Take a look:

• No doubt you, as do I, remember with a peculiar fondness an eerily ethereal smash from the summer of 1992 called “Stay”; the creator of that tune, the miraculous Siobhan Fahey, has just reassembled Shakespear’s Sister, the band who rode the song straight to the top of the charts across the whole damn world, and their brand new album is entitled Songs from the Red Room.

 

• The spectacular soulstress Bettye LaVette turns her rapt attention across the pond to cover the likes of Elton John, Paul McCartney,
  The Moody Blues, The Who, Pink Floyd, and many others on her latest, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook.

 

• They have broken up and reconciled more times than Victor and Nikki, but those alt-rock icons Stone Temple Pilots are officially flying in the same pack anew, and they’re back with a new eponymous album, their first project as a group since 2001’s terrific Shangri-La-Dee-Da.

 

• Brit-rock heroes Stereophonics return with their seventh studio album, Keep Calm and Carry On.

 

• Beck and Feist are among the folks who stop by to help out
  electronica guru Jamie Lidell on his latest record, Compass.

 

• In the week in which we pause as a crunchy to coronate the next American Idol, how fitting that we should be treated to the official stateside debut of Will Young, the first winner of Britain’s Pop Idol (the mega-popular program upon which ours is based). Young’s album is called Leave Right Now, the title track from which has been heard as Idol‘s farewell song during each of this season’s elimination montages.

 

• The songs have been available for free download at the band’s website for weeks now, but if you care about ridiculously ornate deluxe packaging (not to mention indecipherably stupid album titles), then Teargarden By Kaleidyscope 1: Songs for a Sailor — the latest project from Smashing Pumpkins — is almost certainly for you.

 

• With contributions from Cyndi Lauper, Dido, and the magnificent Nicholas Rodriguez, not to mention a duet betwixt those golden-throated uber-divas Leona Lewis and Jennifer Hudson, plus a cover of Beyonce’s smash “Single Ladies” which is performed by the one and only Liza Minnelli, the original motion pitcher soundtrack for Sex and the City 2 would seem at first glance to be a big ol’ gay wet dream, agreed? (Other hot soundtracks out this week: True Blood, Vol. 2, a new collection of music from HBO’s white-hot vampire series, featuring songs from Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, and Beck; and the companion album for box office dud MacGruber, with classic tracks from Eddie Money,
  Mr. Mister, Toto, and Robbie Dupree.)

 

• And finally, one of the finest (and most criminally underappreciated) singer-songwriters in existence — the majestic, magnificent
  Beth Nielsen Chapman — returns with Back to Love,
  her first album in three years.

A is sure to be pleased as punch that the next collection of tunes from his current favorite television series is on tap this week, while I’m about to take a moment or two to tell you about one of the finest, most brilliant women in the whole history of women. Keep reading:

When a television series pounds and drills its way so thoroughly into the acceptable mainstream that even my flat-screen-fearing boyfriend knows (and can recite on demand) such pertinent data as on which network and in which timeslot the program airs, you know it must be white hot, and so it has come to pass with Fox’s utterly deranged gem Glee, which has, in stunningly stealth fashion, morphed into a ratings powerhouse this spring while riding American Idol‘s considerable coattails. Counting last month’s Madonna-themed EP, the series has already thrown off three smash companion albums, and this week, the fourth one becomes available when Glee, The Music: Showstoppers arrives in stores. As with the previous collections, the quality of these interpretations veers wildly and unpredictably between hit and miss — which means for every joyously awesome redo (Lea Michele’s terrific take on All-American Rejects’ “Gives You Hell,” say), there’s a jarringly atrocious one waiting right behind it (the less said about these kids’ wickedly miscalculated stab at remaking “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” the better) — but the fact that this record contains not one but two Lady GaGa covers pretty much ensures that A is gonna hop on board this crazy train with both feet.

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The entire Bon Jovi discography makes its way back to record stores this week via a series of special deluxe edition reissues, and Sherry Ann, A, and myself all wait with bated breath as three of our all-time favorite performers step up to the plate with new projects. Take a looksee:

Because she loves them with a ferocity that could bend steel, I happily turn over the lead paragraph of this week’s record store report to the ever-eloquent Sherry Ann, who reports the following: The National‘s lyricist and lead singer Matt Berninger has a voice that you’ll never forget once you hear it. At first, it’s a bit creepy, but with repeated listens the raspy baritone becomes the perfect complement to the brilliance of the lyrics it conveys. Although relatively unknown to mainstream audiences, the band have been the critics’ darlings since their 2005 release Alligator, and their music has been featured on several television shows, including, most prominently, my beloved One Tree Hill. (One of my favorite-ever Nathan/Haley moments, set to The National’s “Daughters of the Soho Riots,” can be viewed here.) This week, they return with their fifth studio album, High Violet; in my opinion, the standout tracks are the ballad “Runaway” and the up-tempo “Conversation 16,” and with guest appearances by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, this is definitely an album worth checking out.

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Partly because there’s not much coming out this week that has me enraptured, and partly because the first-of-May release slate is a bit sprawling and time is of the essence, this week’s record store report is gonna be short and to the point. Or, as close as to the point as I can possibly get. Dig in:

• I have become convinced that the utterly ravishing Josh Ritter is simply incapable of being anything other than magnificent, and he is back this week with his sixth studio album, So Runs the World Away.

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April comes to a close with an explosion of new material from a handful of the coolest, most fascinating dames in the bidness. Dig in with glee:

Hot on the heels of her second high-profile breakup — and how much did you love her bemused proclamation to Oprah last week that she can’t understand why people keep saying there is no such thing as gay marriage (“I have two ex-wives!”) — comes Fearless Love, the tenth studio album from this generation’s pioneering rock chick Melissa Etheridge. Even though I’m crazy about her in general, I’ll admit I haven’t been so wild about her last couple of records, but the title track from Fearless is easily her strongest single since 2001’s fabulous “I Want to Be in Love” and is garnering her the first real traction she has had at radio in years, so color me cautiously optimistic. (Editor’s note: I found out the hard way tonight, after purchasing this at Best Buy, that the Target edition contains two exclusive bonus tracks, so now I have two of these if someone would like to purchase one.)

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Lotsa great stuff in the pipeline this week, including the latest effort from a much-deserved Grammy winner who, regrettably, has never gotten her proper due from the record-buying public. I probably won’t be able to change that with one measly paragraph inside the Buzz’s record store report. But I can damn well try.

Head on over to your local Target store this week, as Bravo has teamed up with the retail giant to release exclusive DVD season sets of some of their most-watched series, including their insanely popular Real Housewives franchise, Flipping Out, Top Chef, and Kathy Griffin’s riotous My Life on the D-List. A was particularly agog about this promotion, because while on a transcontinental JetBlue flight some time back, he got sucked into watching a four-hour marathon of a Bravo program entitled Million Dollar Listing, which follows three egocentric, young, ridiculously telegenic real estate agents as they wheel and deal their way through the mega-intense shark tank that is the greater Los Angeles housing market. I am man enough to admit that I was enormously dubious when he first told me about this show, because as a man who openly detests television — and simplistic, slickly edited reality television, at that! — A is not at all within eighteen miles of Bravo’s target demographic, but having now watched four of the six episodes which comprise Listing‘s second season — the DVD set of which is available as part of the aforementioned Target promotion — I can attest that this is a fabulous, fascinating program. (And having just bought a house last year, I can testify that all the minutiae contained therein — the haggling, the negotiating, the whittling down of purchase price, the endless inspections — are not exaggerated in the slightest for the benefit of television.) If you’re at all curious about the madcap world of high-end real estate, this is definitely worth a look-see, and I wish to take this opportunity to publicly thank A (of all people!) for bringing it to my attention.

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In my rush to get last week’s record store report published, I regretfully missed a pair of titles that definitely warranted discussion. So before we move on to this week’s goodies, allow me a moment to correct my foolishness:

One of the finest performers I’ve ever seen in my life is the terrific, utterly ravishing Beth Hart, who is best known for her riveting 1999 smash
“L.A. Song (Out of This Town),” and who last week staged phase one of what deserves to be a ferocious comeback effort with an appearance on guitar god Slash‘s brand new eponymous all-star mixtape, which also features contributions from and collaborations with Kid Rock, Fergie, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Chris Cornell, and the fabulous Myles Kennedy (late of Alter Bridge). But it’s with the peerless, authentically gritty Hart that this project explodes to life, and hearing her tear through the “Mother Maria” is like getting a genuine master class in gorgeous, gut-wrenching singing. Beth, my dear: you’ve never sounded better, you’re still kicking ass a decade after your breathtaking breakthrough, and welcome the hell back, babe.

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April arrives in high style, as a boatload of estrogen descends upon poor David Byrne, and a handful of hotly-anticipated sophomore projects make their entrances. Take a look:

Because she is his biggest fan on the planet, bar none, I asked my remarkable best friend Sherry Ann to pen a paragraph about one of this week’s record store report residents. Herewith in its entirety, her novel-length dissertation: “First name Cary, last name Brothers.”  This is how Nashville singer/songwriter Cary Brothers describes himself on his Facebook page.  My guess is to keep people from searching for that ever elusive second Cary Brother that completes the band. Brothers, whose second album Under Control drops this week, got his big break in 2004 when college friend Zach Braff featured his song “Blue Eyes” on the soundtrack to his hit film Garden State. His music has since been used in shows like “One Tree Hill,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Scrubs,” and if I were a betting person, I would put some money down that Mark Schwann will feature the new album in [this season’s] remaining four episodes of OTH.  Under Control is a ten track set (twelve if you buy it on iTunes) that stays in the vein of Brothers’ previous music — indie acoustic pop — but with a lot more production by Dashboard Confessional producer Bill Lefler. If you like Joshua Radin or Mat Kearney, then this album should be right up your alley.  Having already heard his covers of Spandau Ballet’s “True” and the Thompson Twins’ “If You Were Here,” which are available on iTunes, I personally can’t wait to hear Brothers’ take on Level 42’s “Something About You.” The only thing I can possibly add to that is, “Me either.”

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My work schedule has just been impossible for the past couple of weeks, hence the Buzz’s unexpected fourteen day hiatus. But I’m back, fully rested, and thrilled to announce that this blog is back in bidness, effective immediately. Thankfully, the new release wall at your local record store hasn’t exactly been a hopping hotbed of activity during my unfortunate absence, so at least we can all take heart in the knowledge in the fact that we didn’t miss much. Herewith, a recap of what has slipped past the goalie:

Even though he owns one of the most popular, most played songs of the millenium — the ultra-ubiquitous classic “I’ll Be” — he has largely flown under the radar for the whole of his career, having put together one of the most unheralded, underappreciated discographies of the past fifteen years, and this week, Time Life Entertainment deigns to celebrate it properly with a strong new sixteen-track collection entitled, simply,
The Best of Edwin McCain. There are some obvious omissions here — most notably “Go Be Young,” McCain’s spectacular radio smash from 2000, or the brilliantly raucous cover of James Taylor’s “(I’ve Got to) Stop Thinkin’ ‘Bout That” which stood as the high point of his forceful 1997 commercial breakthrough Misguided Roses — but all things considered, Best is a solidly representative cross-section of McCain’s strongest material — I’m ecstatic that whomever in McCain’s camp compiled this set found room for his rollicking 2006 romp “Gramercy Park Hotel,” and Sherry Ann will no doubt be over the moon to find that her all-time favorite “Write Me a Song” (which features a smashing harmony vocal from my beloved Shawn Colvin) also made the cut — and a fine, concise way to introduce yourself to a body of work you very well may have let pass you by for far too long. (By the by, you can find also find a new tune from McCain on the digital-only soundtrack for The Last Song — — a new cinematic tearjerker starring Miley Cyrus, who also contributes a pair of new tracks to the project.)

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Last week was full of fabulosity. This week: decidedly less so. Be careful out there in record store land this week:

• That wacky, brilliant troubadour Josh Rouse takes another dramatic left turn with his bilingual latest, El Turista.

 

• The magnificent Patty Larkin celebrates a quarter-century as a top-flight recording artist with her latest album, 25, which features exactly that many tracks and exactly that many guest stars — among them: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Suzanne Vega, Janis Ian, and the divine Shawn Colvin — and I’m bringing her to Brandon’s Buzz Radio later this month to talk about it.

 

• Country star Gary Allan returns with his latest effort,
  Get Off on the Pain.

 

• With Gnarls Barkley on an indefinite hiatus, supermaverick producer/artist Danger Mouse has teamed up with James Mercer (frontman for The Shins) to create Broken Bells, and their
  hotly-anticipated self-titled debut arrives this week.

 

• I was crazy about their propulsively brilliant last record — 2007’s underrated Baby 81 — and now, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club follows up with their latest, Beat the Devil’s Tattoo.

 

• Ultra-irritating cartoon band Gorillaz are up with their latest,
  Plastic Beach.

 

• If you have yet to take a chance on Train‘s magnificent fifth album,
  Save Me, San Francisco, it’s on sale for the irresistible price of $7.99 at both Best Buy and Amazon.com through Sunday. So for God’s sake: forgo one grande latte this week and buy. this. album!

 

• Finally: don’t laugh, but season seven — and the first one which featured my beloved Nia Peeples — of my old TV favorite
  Walker, Texas Ranger arrives on DVD this week, as does the incredible Mo’Nique and her Academy Award-winning performance in Precious.