Brandon's Buzz

I’m ba-aaaack.

So, hopefully, is the good music.

Yep, after a slow couple of weeks — you know I love her in the heart, but when a Paula Abdul best-of is the best thing you can find to write about, you gots trubble — the May 22 edition of Brandon’s Tips has acres of ground to cover, with seven new albums vying for our attention — it would have been eight, but the new Hanson record, The Walk, has been pushed back to July for reasons undisclosed — and most of them coming from dependable artists who have each delivered no fewer than one classic in the past. Other words: pressure’s on, folks.

To start, the latest instance of an increasingly common practice that continues to hack me plumb the hell off: adding bonus content to an already-released album and trying to get unsuspecting consumers (or die-hard fans) to buy it again. If you knew how many albums I have two copies of for this very reason, you’d faint. Sometimes, it’s worth it (see: last year’s re-release of Augustana’s stunning debut, which contains a stirring, soulful acoustic reading of “Stars and Boulevards” that I’m pretty sure I like better than the original (and I loved the original!)) and sometimes it’s just eh (see: last year’s re-release of Anna Nalick’s debut, with its tacked-on demos and that godawful re-recording of “Wreck of the Day,” the stench from which I had to burn incense to fully eradicate). This week brings us a so-called “deluxe edition” of Dashboard Confessional’s strong 2006 album Dusk and Summer. Now, you’re asking, “Why would they re-release that?” And the answer is, Chris Carrabba — in one of the year’s spectacular dum-dum decisions — has taken one of his record’s best songs, the burning ballad “Stolen,” and re-fashioned it as a midtempo rock track, and that version is starting to generate some heat at top 40 radio, so the good folks at Vagrant Records think it’s a good time to put this album back on the new release racks at your neighborhood music store. Isn’t that awfully nice of those obscenely greedy bastards? Evidently, they’ve also tossed in a ringtone and a poster and who-knows-what-else in order to make slightly less blatant the robbery they’re about to execute; the upshot is, the new version is on sale for $7.99 at Target and Best Buy this week, and the Best Buy edition comes with a bonus downloadable interview with Carrabba. (What he can possibly say about his songs that he doesn’t already say in them — with the possible exception of “I mainlined Automatic for the People via intravenous drip throughout the whole making of my album, and I love Michael Stipe hard enough to turn gay for him” — is another matter entirely, but I digress.)

A band I know little about, except to say that they have come off in the past as a low-rent Killers, is The Bravery, but they’re back with a new CD, The Sun and the Moon, this week. I do kinda like the first single, “Time Won’t Let Me Go,” so this might be worth looking into if you’re in the mood for something a bit more percussive. It’s on sale across the board this week for $9.99; the Target version has a bonus DVD, and the Best Buy version has a bonus cd with extra music.

On the heels of a live CD/DVD combo spotlighting their 2006 unplugged tour, those crazy cool Brits Erasure are back with a new studio project, Light at the End of the World, and by all accounts, they’ve ditched the acoustic guitars that their last album, Union Street, was loaded with and have firmly entrenched themselves back in Drum Machine Land where they’ve always belonged. Truth time: their last few albums have left me a bit cold (as did Andy Bell’s 2005 solo CD) and this set’s lead single “I Could Fall in Love With You” is far from their best. But these guys always have the strangest way of snapping back to form — witness their trippy, ridiculously fun cover of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” from a few years back — just when you think they’ve become hopelessly irrelevant. Don’t count ’em out.

Two years ago saw the release of Motown Remixed, a collection of some of its namesake’s best-loved hits (Edwin Starr’s “War” and Gladys Knight’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” to name two) that had been reworked and reimagined by contemporary DJs. It was seen by some die-hards as heresy, but my best friend Sherry will tell you I’m the biggest sucker in the free world for crap like this, and I found it to be a breezy, fun listen. And this week, we get another taste, as Motown Remixed, Vol. 2 finds its way to store shelves. The sequel contains, among others, funked-up mixes of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Martha and the Vandellas’ classic “Heat Wave,” and should be no less interesting than its predecessor.

A rollicking, faithful cover of “Heat Wave” also appears on the new effort from the incomparable Joan Osborne, who just released a record — the decidedly country-ish Pretty Little Stranger — last November, but who is already back with her next offering, another soul-tinged covers collection called Breakfast in Bed. She previously tried this with 2001’s How Sweet It Is, which was admirably ambitious but very stuffy and waaaaay over-produced; I’ve heard four of the tracks from the new album — her riveting take on Hall & Oates’ all-time classic “Sara Smile” might just be the sexiest thing you’ll hear all year, kids — and I feel confident in saying that won’t be an issue this time around. Regardless, even when it doesn’t quite the hit the mark, this woman’s earthy artistry is always a welcome joy to behold.

May 29 will mark the tenth anniversary of Jeff Buckley‘s enormously tragic drowning, and to commemorate the solemn event, Columbia this week releases So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley, a fairly well-assembled collection of highlights from his two studio and four live albums. With all the posthumous Buckley recordings that have surfaced in the decade since his death, it has become quite easy to forget that he only released one album — the peerlessly gorgeous 1994 knockout Grace — in his lifetime. (He was halfway finished with his second record, to be called My Sweetheart the Drunk, when he died; his mother enlisted good friend Chris Cornell — whom we’ll be discussing in a few weeks when his new CD drops — to pore through what Jeff and his band had already recorded, and what Cornell assembled became Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk the following year.) So Real contains the best of those two projects — particularly Grace’s central trifecta of “Last Goodbye,” “Lover, You Should Have Come Over,” and that achingly profound cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which, helped along by its indelible usage in the last scene of the first season finale of “The O.C.” (if I admit that I bawled — profusely — as Ryan got into Peter Gallagher’s car, resigned to a miserable life in Chino and leaving poor Marissa and Seth positively devastated, will you still think me a man?) has become positively legendary — along with a few previously unreleased live recordings, and seems a tailor-made starter kit for the Buckley uninitiated.

Without question, the week’s marquee release is the loooooong-awaited sophomore disc from those brash upstarts Maroon 5, who set the music world on its ear with their five-times-platinum 2003 debut Songs About Jane and walked off with an armful of Grammys for their troubles. They’re back after an excruciating wait with It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, which is easily the worst album title since Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King, What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing ‘Fore He Enters the Ring, There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right. (All you young ‘uns currently reading this: I swear to Jesus I didn’t just make that up!). More truth time: Jane didn’t do that much for me taken as a whole, and I always thought its biggest hit, the mind-numbing “This Love,” was just plain atrocious. But frontman Adam Levine has one of those voices that works exceedingly well in both angry and tender moments, and, justice prevailing, it’s only gonna get stronger and more ferociously focused; Before Long’s first single, the deliciously bitter kiss-off “Makes Me Wonder,” is already a massive smash and figures to be inescapable this summer, and I can’t wait to hear the album it teases.

Strong voices populate this week’s tipsheet, so it’s only right that those same voices fill out its playlist. A, you better buckle up, baby, because the wondrous forthcoming tracks you’re getting set to sample here’ll give you whiplash if you underestimate their potency. You’ve been warned.

1. “She Will Be Loved” — Maroon 5 (from Songs About Jane) — as I said, the album didn’t bowl me over, but hidden in plain sight on it was this astonishing marvel, one of those precious few songs that pitches a tent in your cerebellum on contact and flouts each and every eviction notice. “Look for the girl with the broken smile / ask her if she wants to stay awhile….” If Adam and these boys never wrote another note of music forever, this one brilliant tune would still qualify them as legends.

2. “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” — Jeff Buckley (from Grace) — perhaps fairly and perhaps not, Buckley’s too-early death — he was all of 28 years old when he drowned — has somewhat deified his music, particularly his debut album, because the relative handful of songs that comprise his oeuvre hint at a talent and a (ahem) grace that will never be fully realized (at least not on this plane), and the pained near-yelp in his voice lays bare not only the tender beauty of what does exist, but what could have existed had he lived to grow and improve as an artist and as a man. Fact: if this kid was wise enough to write a stanza as specific and acutely observed as “my kingdom / for a kiss / upon her shoulder / all my riches / for her smiles / when I slept so soft / against her / all my blood / for the sweetness / of her laughter” in his early 20s, he’d have been bigger than Dylan by the time he hit his prime.

3. “Pensacola” — Joan Osborne (from Relish) — it’d probably behoove me to put “One of Us” in this slot — and make no mistake, it’s an epic classic that deserved every ounce of the endless attention it received back in the day; “what if God / was one of us?” must be one of the coolest, most intriguing lyrical baselines of the last half century — but “Pensacola” comes closer to representing what Osborne has always tried to portray herself as: the world-weary, seen-it-all blues mama. A great song from one of the most startling debuts in music history.

4. “These Arms of Mine” — Joan Osborne (from How Sweet It Is) — I’ve heard enough music and I’ve known enough pain to comprehend with gut-wrenching clarity that this can’t not be true: on the right day, at the right instant, the exact right song truly can save your life. A couple of years ago, I got my heart broken for the first time (and I’m talkin’ demolished). He was just a stupid kid playing a reckless game (and essentially, so was I, and even better, my stupidity and recklessness were magnified tenfold by the fact that I let him hold all the cards, so ravenous was I for a genuine human connection), and he certainly got the funny story he was bargaining for. I’m not at all sure why I’m telling any of you any of this — forgive me, it’s 3 a.m. and my guard is down for the night — but as I was weathering that storm, I stumbled on this song — a staggering, soul-rocking cover of Otis Redding’s legendary smash — on some silly compilation album that I happened to pick up one night. I did more than simply listen to this track every day for months (literally, months); I wrapped it around me, like a blanket, like a life jacket. However asinine the entire experience seems now (and believe me, it’s plenty preposterous in hindsight), at the time, these four-plus minutes of searing, lived-in rhythm and blues — owing as much to the spot-on lyrics as to Joan’s astoundingly sincere vocal — conveyed precisely what I was feeling, what I was going through, what I was wanting with every last motherfucking fiber of my neglected, rejected being. I get a little crazy sometimes with people who treat music — the soundtrack of their damn lives! — like so much wallpaper, and only because I’ve seen with my own face the scary, unbridled power that a simple song can wield. (There are others, to be absolutely sure, but it’s for that reason primarily that absurd drivel like “My Humps” and “Fergalicious” — goofy pieces of worthless crap that add nothing, not even on the most imperceptible level of fluff, to the human dialogue — drive me batshit. Meantime, the story above has a postscript: got over the guy, wounds healed over, met a real man, Joan kept singin’, I kept livin’.)

5. “Hands Down” — Dashboard Confessional (from A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar) — as I wrote last summer, I’m the biggest fool ever for Chris Carrabba’s baby-faced melodramatics. The juxtaposition here between youthful exuberance and mature emotion never fails to send me into giddy figure-eights, and that killer second verse — in which Carrabba blasts his buddies for inquiring whether he, umm, got some, but then tells his girl immediately thereafter that they should really think about, umm, gettin’ some — surely will stand as one of the decade’s classic stanzas.