Brandon's Buzz

One of the funniest, most wholly satisfying seasons of television in the history of the medium hits DVD at long last this week, surrounded by a passel of worthy music choices populating the new release wall at your local record store. Live it up, kids — it’s a banner week:

A’s new favorite guy, the cutie-pie balladeer Jamie Cullum, returns this week with his fourth album, The Pursuit, which includes his apeshit crazy cover of Rihanna’s smash “Don’t Stop the Music” and a gentle reading of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd classic “Not While I’m Around,” as well as the stirring title track he contributed last year to Clint Eastwood’s hit film Gran Torino. (Don’t miss the deluxe edition of Pursuit, which contains a DVD with a handful of live performances, recorded at the famed Montreux Jazz Festival, and videos, plus an interview which finds Jamie going through the album track by track.)

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The Buzz was down all last week, preventing me from penning a record store report. Fortunately, you didn’t miss much, as last week was a wasteland with regard to new music. And with only one major release of note this coming Tuesday, it looks like more of the same as February draws to a close. Dig in:

Three years ago, a knockout smash called “Stop Me” — a collaboration with Mark Ronson, who was the hot producer du jour, having just shepherded that hot mess Amy Winehouse to global glory — instantly hurled a striking young British lad name of Daniel Merriweather onto the map, and we’ve spent that entire time waiting patiently for him to deliver unto us a full-length project so that we could enjoy his huskily off-center voice over the course of several songs. The wait is finally over, as Daniel’s major-label debut album Love and War finally arrives stateside. Welcome back, Danny; can’t wait to get to know you, sir.

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A pair of hotly anticipated comeback efforts, and another suffocating attack of acute Taylor-Swift-itis, punctuate this week’s new releases. Jump with care:

An out and proud lesbian with a gorgeously husky voice that is deeper than most men’s makes for the least likely pop star in modern music history. And yet that Canadian spitfire k.d. lang has defied all the odds, having put together a career replete with both critical and commercial success, and this week, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of her recording debut, lang stops to reflect with the new double-disc set Recollection. Pretty much everything that needs to be here is — the radio hits “Constant Craving” and “Miss Chatelaine”; her smashing duets with Roy Orbison (“Crying”) and Tony Bennett (“Moonglow”); and her triumphant covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me,” and Chris Isaak’s “Western Stars” — and for the truly devoted, there’s also a deluxe four-disc set which contains a bonus CD of live performances and DVD with music videos.

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Last week’s new release slate was an absolute barn-burner. This week’s: yeah, not so much. Dig in:

• Previously released tunes from Joshua Radin and The Swell Season,
  as well as a new duet from Rachael Yamagata and Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, highlight the soundtrack for the new weepie Dear John.

 

• Mega-selling rapper Lil Wayne takes a stab at hard rock with his long-awaited latest, Rebirth.

 

• ’90s sensation Michael Bolton is back this week with a
  Target exclusive, a collection of hits and favorites recorded
  Live at the Royal Albert Hall.

 

• While his brothers take a brief break from the biz, Nick Jonas and his new band The Administration are up with a side project, Who I Am.

 

• Finally, Sherry Ann insisted that I not fail to mention (as if I would!)
  Almost Everything I Wish I’d Said the Last Time I Saw You, the new album from “One Tree Hill” regular Mike Grubbs and his band Wakey!Wakey!

January roars to a close with a ferocious cross-section of great new music to choose from, including what may stand as the two most-anticipated sophomore outings of the new year. Take a look:

Even though it has sold well over one million copies (largely on the strength of her name and of residual goodwill toward her), and even though it’s loaded with drive-time-friendly fare (most prominently, the shockingly frisky “Million Dollar Bill”), pop radio has largely failed to take the bait on the divine Whitney Houston‘s underrated latest album I Look to You. But this week brings a reminder that once upon a magical time, she was the queen of pop music, as Arista marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of her sterling thirteen-times-platinum debut with a deluxe edition re-release. Newly added to the record are a trio of dance remixes, a remarkable a capella take on Houston’s classic “How Will I Know,” and a live version of “Greatest Love of All.” Also included: a DVD featuring the album’s four music videos, new interviews with Houston and Arista’s founder Clive Davis, and a rare clip of Houston’s national debut on The Merv Griffin Show.

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It’s a little better out there this week than the last couple, but we’re still biding our time while we await the imminent monster that is next week. Consider this an appetizer:

It’s not always the case, frighteningly enough, but this year’s annual single-disc roundup of tunes that are vying for the Recording Academy’s highest honors, Grammy Nominees 2010, plays like a mixtape of the year’s strongest, most fascinating music. (Imagine that!) True, you have to sit through the likes of Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce, as well, not to mention subpar material from the typically dependable U2, Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, and Kelly Clarkson, but I say any album which can wrangle aural diamonds from Kings of Leon (the staggering “Use Somebody”), The Fray (“You Found Me,” putting Isaac Slade’s scary-good vocals on a riveting piano-based pedestal), Lady Antebellum (the revelatory “I Run to You”), and Dave Matthews Band (“You and Me,” a sweet fare-thee-well to a fallen comrade-in-arms) onto the very same slice of musical real estate is mighty fine by me.

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Another low-key week on tap, although with a new Patty Griffin record due at the end of the month, take heed: the new release wall won’t be this slow and dull forever. Dive in:

• Remixes of recent radio smashes from Black Eyed Peas, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, David Guetta, and others highlight Total Club Hits, Vol. 4,
  the latest from those canny geniuses at Thrive Records.

 

• Contra, the second record from rising cult band Vampire Weekend.

 

• Those DIY wunderkinds OK Go are back with their latest effort,
  Of the Blue Colour of the Sky.

 

• Acclaimed singer/songwriter Freedy Johnston returns with
  Rain on the City, his first album in nearly a decade.

 

• Rain or Shine, a four-disc live collection from A’s favorite road dogs O.A.R.

 

• And finally, Sherry Ann’s reason for living this week: a new Jason Mraz track has somehow or other found its way onto the original motion picture soundtrack for the new Josh Duhamel flick When in Rome.

It’s the first week of a new year, and the pickins are extremely slim. Have at it:

• She’s got the number one single — the ridiculous “Tik Tok” — in the crunchy right now. Now comes Animal, the full-length debut from Ke$ha.

 

• Since it includes tunes co-written by the likes of Paula Cole and Rachael Yamagata, is it really fair to judge Unbroken, the sophomore effort from former “American Idol” runner-up Katharine McPhee, before we’ve actually heard it?

 

• And finally, a CD/DVD combo chronicling Kanye West‘s recent visit to VH1 Storytellers.

Your local record store’s new release wall is an utter dead zone this week, which finds not even one major new album jockeying for all those post-Christmas gift card dollars. (And buck up out there, cowboys, because a quick scan of the January slate reveals that next week ain’t lookin’ so hot, either.) But the week is not a total wash, rest assured:

And now, a true story: my beloved A, who is the great love of my life, absolutely detests television. He’s one of these people who would much rather be reading The New Yorker, or enjoying a measure of sunshine, or doing anything other than spending an hour or two or seven channel-surfing, and while I’ll confess that I find that quirk in his personality to be quite admirable (and even a little inspiring), I also find it very strange, and thoroughly crazy-making. Nevertheless, there are shows that can impel A to sit still for a spell and offer up his undivided attention, and — at least of late — none holds more powerful sway over him than the new Fox smash Glee, whose first thirteen episodes arrive on DVD this week in a sparkling four-disc set entitled Vol. 1: The Road to Sectionals.

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Dreadful sorry for the severe dearth in Buzz posts the past week or so: between keeping my radio show up and running, getting my annual music project for Sherry Ann’s churren recorded, and, oh, earning a living, I’ve been utterly swamped lately. Good thing, then, that there hasn’t been much of note to discuss regarding the new release wall, as Susan Boyle mania reaches a fever pitch. Take a look:

One of country radio’s most dependable stalwarts, the incredible Phil Vassar, returns to the fore this week with his fifth studio album, Traveling Circus. The first two singles from Circus — “Bobbi with an I” (the hilarious video for which features James Denton of “Desperate Housewives” fame) and “Everywhere I Go” — have yet to generate a great deal of traction in radio’s female-fronted fall (hello, Carrie and Taylor), although, to be perfectly fair, the former, which dares to promote a fun-loving transvestite as its protagonist, was always going to be a tough sell throughout the genre’s red state stranglehold. Regardless, you won’t find a more consistently intriguing and dependable songwriter (and, not to mention, a cooler piano player) anywhere in Nashville.

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The best, most thrilling concert I’ve ever been to in my life hits DVD this week, and you’ll find the year’s greatest assemblage of musical all-stars on the new release wall as well. As the December doldrums go, you could do a hell of a lot worse:

Just a month after Volume 1 hit stores with a bang, Fox and the folks at their latest television smash are back on the case with the release of Glee: The Music, Vol. 2, another collection of seventeen cover tunes from the hit high school musical comedy. The show tends to give me hives, but the quality of the music is beyond reproach, and I’m happy to report that the cast’s showstopping rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” — done in collaboration with a deaf glee club from a neighboring school (you had to be there!) in an episode from a couple of weeks ago — makes the cut here, and it’s so great that it almost makes you forget about the kids’ abominable desecration of Van Halen’s 1984 classic “Jump.”

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Typically, after November’s music slate builds to a budget-busting, orgasmic wall-of-sound crescendo, the December doldrums set in. 2009 is no exception, with only one major release worth getting any degree of excited over. Happy shopping, y’all:

With over 70 million albums sold, she has taken a great deal of the entire world under her Irish new-age-y spell, and now she pauses to take the measure of two decades of music with her brand new collection, The Very Best of Enya, which pulls together all her classic singles — from her massive 1988 breakthrough “Orinocco Flow” and her 1996 classic “Anywhere Is,” right up through last year’s “Trains and Winter Rains” — into one breathtaking 22-track set. I haven’t picked this up yet, so I can’t tell you which version of her left-field 2001 smash “Only Time” — the horrid original version, or the crackling remix, which became a runaway behemoth at top 40 radio in the immediate wake of 9/11 — appears here, but I pray it’s the latter, since, to my knowledge, that version has never been made commercially available. But because I’m thrilled to see my favorite-ever Enya tune — 2002’s glorious “Wild Child” — in the mix, odds are I’ll forgive her either way.

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Thanksgiving week is an unusually muted affair this year: this is typically the “official” kickoff of the holiday shopping season, and so the record companies generally wait until this week to unleash their biggest and most interesting firepower. But, because I’m decidedly not a Glambert, and because I find the year’s hottest British import just a step or two above a kitschy novelty, color me entirely underwhelmed by the latest slate of new releases. Dive in with caution:

• The decade’s most irritating strumpet Shakira is back with her latest, She Wolf.

 

• That human lightning rod Lady GaGa is back in action with
  The Fame Monster, an eight-song adjunct to her mega-selling debut.

 

• Urrybody’s favorite vegan Moby is back with a deluxe edition of his terrific album from last spring, Wait for Me.

 

• The pride of Barbados, the incredible Rihanna, is up with her fourth album, Rated R.

 

• The legendary Tom Waits returns with Glitter and Doom Live,
  a chronicle of his most recent tour.

 

• Anybody out there have any idea how that doofus Jimmy Wayne conned Daryl Hall and John Oates into helping him cover their classic Sara Smile, the title track from Wayne’s latest CD?

 

• Beyonce presents I Am…Yours: An Intimate Performance
  at Wynn Las Vegas, a fairly self-explanatory three-disc live effort which finds her covering 2Pac’s “California Love” and Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” (I’m really not kidding about that, Sherry Ann!)

 

• Her global coming out party is one of the most-viewed videoclips in YouTube history; let’s see if the much-heralded Susan Boyle can turn that recognition into record sales with her debut release,
  I Dreamed a Dream.

 

• Regular readers of the Buzz know that I had utterly no use for the ridiculous Adam Lambert and his screechy theatrics on last season’s “American Idol.” Still, if you’re kinda curious to hear what he sounds like on record, he offers up himself For Your Entertainment. Go with God,
  all you Glamberts.

 

• And last but absolutely not least: it’s Thanksgiving week in Austin, Texas, which means the return of that beloved annual tradition known as KGSR Broadcasts. This year’s double-disc edition (Vol. 17, if you’re keeping count) includes exclusive acoustic recordings from The Avett Brothers, Pete Yorn, Ben Harper, Tift Merritt, Ryan Adams, Raul Malo, and the incomparable Tori Amos.