Brandon's Buzz

Natasha Bedingfield — “Little Too Much” (from Strip Me) —

Tuesday, we heard from her brother Daniel, and today, it’s Natasha’s turn: I fear it’s going to get buried in the mind-blowing crush of late-year albums currently jockeying for position on the record store’s new release wall — not quite sure why they didn’t hold this until February or March, particularly since top 40 radio is thus far cool toward the lovely lead single — but I spun Natty’s brand new CD twice straight through today and found it to be ravishingly terrific, a wondrous whale of a pop record. (A quick scan of the behind-the-scenes credits reveals a cadre of creative aces — John Shanks, Ryan Tedder, and the divine Danielle Brisebois, among them — whose sonic fingerprints on this material are quite easy to identify in retrospect.) “Too Much,” the record’s dynamite opening track, handily sets the tone for Strip — in short, love is all there is, and it’s worth the risk every time — and creates a theme for Bedingfield to explore fully for the remainder. She’s battling divas at both poles of the pop spectrum, with Rihanna (back to her loud and rowdy roots) at one end and La Swift (so pure, it floats) at the other; time will soon tell just how smart Bedingfield and company were to play this one straight down the middle.

Zac Brown Band — “Colder Weather”
(from You Get What You Give) —

In preparation of my annual best-of-year music roundup, I’ve spent the past few days catching up with the handful of records that have slipped through the cracks of my attention. As a proudly gay man with a primary penchant for bucketfuls of angst in his aural entertainment, I know I am hardly in Brown’s general target demographic. But this tune — a devastating survey of a man running like the wind from the frozen ghost (real or perceived) of a woman he loved in another lifetime, and an astonishing anomaly on what is otherwise a fairly upbeat record — quite literally reaches out from the stereo speakers and slaps your soul out of its complacency. A natural successor to “Fire and Rain” (with a soupcon of “Please Come to Boston” tossed in, just for good measure), “Weather” plays like the greatest song James Taylor never had the balls to write. (And it may not sound like it, depending on your particular vantage point, but I absolutely mean that as a compliment!)

The post-Thanksgiving hangover has faded, and it’s pretty much all downhill from here, with only a handful of major releases left on the calendar before the clock strikes twelve and all the rest of this fall’s new records jockeying for berths in Christmas stockings the world over. Take a peek:

• Those infernal, insufferable Black Eyed Peas are back on the block with The Beginning, which includes their heinous reinvention of Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’ Oscar-winning theme song from Dirty Dancing. (It’s bad enough that them flipin’ Glee kids had to go and fuck with this inviolable classic from my childhood, but listening to Fergie try this one on for size literally makes me want to puncture my poor eardrums with a chewed-up Bic pen cap.)
• Speaking of those chirpin’ churren from McKinley High’s New Directions: Glee: The Music, Volume 4, the latest collection of covers from Fox’s smash television series, contains a handful of highlights from this season’s first half, including the cast’s exhilarating take on Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and newcomer Darren Criss’ sweetly affecting remake of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.”

 

• Her terrific 2008 album Rockferry was a Grammy-winning sensation
  that had us all begging for mercy; this week, my favorite Welsh goddess this side of Bonnie Tyler — the divine Duffy — follows up her debut with a sophomore effort, Endlessly.

 

• Led by their current radio smash “Rhythm of Love,” those pesky
  Plain White T’s return with their latest record, Wonders of the Younger

 

• She’s been playing it cool in the four years since her explosive breakthrough with 2007’s The Reminder, but Feist is back this week with the new CD/DVD combo Look At What the Light Did Now, which documents the making of Reminder and contains live performances captured on the world tour she mounted to support the record.

 

• Anybody out there remember El DeBarge? The terrific work he turned in with the family band that bore his surname landed them a string of huge hits in the mid-to-late ’80s, and he returns to the spotlight with a new solo effort, Second Chance.

 

• As was tipped off in yesterday’s dispatch from the hive, the fabulous Natasha Bedingfield is back this week with her third album, Strip Me.

 

• Country icon Tim McGraw neatly ties up nearly two decades of consistent success with a new two-disc retrospective entitled, simply, Number One Hits.
• Up-and-coming singer/songwriter Diane Birch returns this week with a new digital EP, The Velveteen Age, which includes a funky cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ brilliant breakthrough “Kiss Them for Me.”
• If you missed its very limited theatrical run this past summer, don’t fail to catch up with the new documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty —
  a stirring (and surprisingly gripping) chronicle of the return to prominence of Disney’s animation division, which had become an embarrassing afterthought in the years since Walt had passed on, and which, thanks to a series of key personnel moves and creative risktaking, enjoyed a staggering renaissance beginning with the arrival of 1989’s Oscar-winning instant classic The Little Mermaid — on DVD.
• Finally, head on down to your local Barnes and Noble this week and pick up their exclusive DVD edition of Davd Gray‘s recent appearance on PBS’ magnificent music series Live from the Artists’ Den. (And since you’re there anyway, go ahead and pick up similar exclusive Den DVDs from Patty Griffin and the ferocious Tori Amos; I dare you to tell me you wouldn’t love to spend the rest of the year bisecting the corners of that equilateral triangle!)

Cyndi Lauper — “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
(from She’s So Unusual) —

In ways too multiple to enumerate, Lauper was the original Lady GaGa. And, in much the same way that GaGa’s garishness and excess often distracts from the fact that she can be quite a potent performer, Lauper let herself get boxed in for far too long in the early days of her career by her wacky-chick shtick. (Only time will tell if Gags will be able to diversify her Day-Glowing discography as handsomely in the years to come as Lauper has managed to.) Watching those misbegotten misfits Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj stumble over themselves mangling this magnificent tune during last weekend’s painfully overbaked VH1 Divas special reminded me not only of what a pristinely perfect pop record “Girls” was, is, and always will be, but also of how easy Lauper made brilliant look.

Daniel Bedingfield — “Blown It Again” (from Gotta Get Thru This) —

His fabulously foxy sister Natasha is still kicking ass (indeed,
her third album is due in stores today), but, for whatever odd reason, Danny himself — last heard from in 2004, with a spectacular second album that wasn’t even deemed worthy of release stateside — has seemingly fallen completely off the grid. Consider this a smoke signal, imploring him to phone home.

Blake Shelton — “Ol’ Red”
(from Loaded: The Best of Blake Shelton) —

I s’pose his recent win as the Country Music Association’s Male Vocalist of the Year means that I can no longer refer to Shelton as a vastly underrated talent. He has had substantially bigger hits, but this — a highly hilarious prison break fairy tale that no less than George Jones and Kenny Rogers have also taken stabs at — has always been my bar-none favorite. (Moral of the story: dog really is man’s best friend, even when he’s trained not to be.)

If you missed any of last week’s tunes, below is a quick recap:

MONDAY: Kate Rusby — “The Wild Goose” (from Sleepless) —

TUESDAY: Soul II Soul (featuring Caron Wheeler) —
“Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)” (from Keep On Movin’) —

WEDNESDAY: The Pretenders — “2000 Miles”
(from The Singles) —

THURSDAY: Lady Antebellum — “Need You Now”
(from Need You Now) —

FRIDAY: Brendan James — “Stupid for Your Love”
(from Brendan James) —

SATURDAY: Basia Bulat — “If It Rains” (from Heart of My Own) —

SUNDAY: Madonna (featuring Lil Wayne) —
“Revolver [David Guetta One Love Mix]” (from One Love 2010) —

Madonna (featuring Lil Wayne) — “Revolver [David Guetta One Love Mix]” (from One Love 2010) —

Fifty-two now, and she still hasn’t figured out the art of subtlety. Not that it matters: helped out by Wayne’s typically randy cameo, Guetta bestows his magical Midas touch onto the Material Girl’s strongest (and most fascinatingly frisky) single in at least a decade.

Basia Bulat — “If It Rains” (from Heart of My Own) —

A meandering yarn about why the iPhone might just be the greatest freakin’ invention in the history of ever: A had to drive to Houston yesterday to take some insurance exam (the full purpose of which I remain unclear, though I’m sure he’ll love you sending him all your good karma), and I spent much of the day backing up the important file on my computer so that I could turn it over to the good folks at Best Buy, who are slated to replace the machine’s dead battery and repair the touchpad’s broken left click button. And after that wrenching experience — if you know me at all, you know I never, ever, ever part with my computer, which is essentially a permanent extension of my typing fingers, as seemingly vital to my inner stasis and well-being as such trivial mechanisms as lungs and kidneys — I needed a little retail therapy, which in my case almost always means a trip to the local record store. And whilst I was browsing the racks and taking in the sights and sounds of my single favorite place on Earth, a song I failed to recognize came tumbling from the store’s loudspeaker. Back in my Luddite days, I would have either bummed a pen off of somebody and scribbled down some lyrics on my hand — or, barring that, would have just tried like hell to remember a line or two — to look up when I got home. But now, just as it has with so many other mundane daily activities (checking email, tweeting, catching up on the news and weather, even setting up the damned DVR), the new phone has revolutionized the ID process: I cued up that handy-as-hell Shazam app and had a definitive answer inside of ten seconds. And me and my iTunes lived ‘appily ever after. (P.S.: Isn’t this song just terrific? I know nothing at all about this girl — trust and believe that’ll be changing, ay-sap — but, if this is any indication, she’s an elegant font of earth-mama fabulosity.)

Brendan James — “Stupid for Your Love” (from Brendan James) —

One of those happy, cutesy tunes that also manages to hit home (like, how many of us haven’t done a handful of abominably stupid things in the name of (what we thought was) love?). (Incidentally, A, my favorite mathematician, reports that, off the top of his head, he can only remember nine of the numbers that succeed 3.14 in pi — to be fair, it has been years since my beloved needed to be able to — so this lovesick James kid is doing pretty swell, if you axe me.)

Lady Antebellum — “Need You Now” (from Need You Now) —

More extensive thoughts on the just-announced 2011 Grammy nominations are forthcoming — would have live-blogged the thing, as per Buzz tradition, but A and I had a small dinner party last night and I wasn’t sure we’d be done in time (turns out we were) — but get a good lingering look at your Record of the Year winner right cheer, peeps: pitted as it is against four rap-slash-hip-hop hits — Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You,” Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie,” B.o.B.’s “Nothin’ On You,” and Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” which you just know are all gonna split that contingent’s vote that many ways — you can betcher bippy that Lady A’s blockbuster crossover smash will stand as safe harbor for all those stodgy old Academy members whom Marshall Mathers and his ilk scare the living, curdled crap out of. (Of course, the fact that “Need” is the hands-down best tune among the five singled out for recognition will certainly help carry it to the winners’ circle, but — just as with that Dixie Chicks sweep a few years ago — don’t believe for a slick second that that’s the reason it’s gonna win.)

The Pretenders — “2000 Miles” (from The Singles) —

Christmas month opens in earnest with one of my all-time favorites, which A and I heard last night as we waited for a table at one of our favorite restaurants. Even though, much like Joni Mitchell’s classic “River,” it is related to the holiday on only a superficial level, “Miles” has become the token heartbreaker on many a Christmas album, but methinks you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more moving (or more masterfully executed) version than the wistfully shattering original, on which Chrissie Hynde achingly yearns for the safe and timely return of an absent loved one. (Here’s hoping the one you adore is not two thousand miles away from you this holiday season.)

Soul II Soul (featuring Caron Wheeler) —
“Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)” (from Keep On Movin’) —

I had to drive eight hours round trip for work yesterday, so suffice to say, there was lots of iPod shuffling goin’ on, and this classic from 1989 was one of the chestnuts that popped up. I hadn’t heard this in eons (and I reckon you haven’t either), but damn if I wasn’t jamming along within seconds anyhow: one of the first bona-fide club smashes to cross over to the pop charts, no less a connoisseur than George Michael loved this song so much he remixed his own hit “Freedom ’90” to sample it. (Am I nuts, or can you trace the rise of the modern hip hop movement all the way back to this tune’s explosive crossover success?)