a faded rose from days gone by
(or: june 1 — a thumbnail sketch)
posted at 9:22 pm by brandon in tuesdays in the record store with brandon
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.
Designed surely as a marvelous bookend for last summer’s My Turn, a collection of classic country covers, the terrific folks at Time-Life are up with a collection of the phenomenal Tanya Tucker‘s Greatest Hits. This set focuses primarily on Tucker’s number one singles (with a pair of tracks from My Turn plus the iconic classic “Delta Dawn” tossed in for good measure), so don’t be fooled into thinking this is a comprehensive career compilation, but let me say this: I’ve listened to this disc twice through and these tunes sound utterly fabulous. I have no idea if these tracks were officially remastered for this release, but “What’s Your Mama’s Name” — my personal favorite among Tanya’s hits, the original recording of which is close to forty years old — sounds as crisp and clean as if it were laid down yesterday.
A rumbling new wave of Sony Legacy’s brilliant Playlist collections rolls out this week, and the marquee title in this rollout is unquestionably
The Very Best of the Dixie Chicks. And while it may strike you as odd that the Chicks are allowing their very first career retrospective to be presented as a budget-priced knockoff, it bears noting that those goofy, ridiculous heifers have never made a single professional move that involved anything resembling logic, so why waste time believing they would start now? Luckily for us, their loyal public, this assemblage of tunes is impressively representative of the Chicks’ immense talents as musicians — with only their stupid, snickering “Not Ready to Make Nice” marring the festivities — and I’d like to offer my thanks to whomever compiled this collection for seeing fit to include “The Long Way Around,” the Chicks’ hands-down best song ever. (Other artists whose discographies are being plumbed for new Playlist releases include Art Garfunkel
The Charlie Daniels Band
Three years ago, for an ill-fated exclusive in-store promotion, Target commissioned a handful of second-generation musicians — many of them quite well-known in their own right — to pay tribute to their proud papas by covering some of their most famous songs. The album was met by Target shoppers with a ginormous shrug, and came and went through the chain’s stores in a matter of weeks, but now, just in time for Father’s Day, the terrific A Song for My Father is thankfully receiving a mass-market push, and trust me: tracking this album down is well worth the effort. Song contains a bounty of gems, with Ben Taylor (son of James) laying down a mean version of “Bartender’s Blues” and Jen Chapin (daughter of Harry) offering an oddly satisfying twist on “Cat’s in the Cradle.” But give the gold medal to Leonard Cohen’s preternatually gifted son Adam, who gives the record its emotional center of gravity with a wrenching, revelatory take on “Bird on a Wire.”
Quintessential laid-back surfer dude (and, natch, Hawaii native) Jack Johnson, whom Sherry Ann adores with a ferocity that is frightening and occasionally befuddling, is almost certainly the decade’s least likely pop superstar, and yet he and his soothing brand of guitar strumming have created some of the most dependably successful musical entertainment to be found, and he returns this week with his fifth studio album — sixth, if you count his megasmash Curious George soundtrack (for which he produced his best song, the enchanting, quietly exhilarating “Upside Down”) — the ever-eclectic
To the Sea. If there’s anything else you guys need to know about Jack, I’m sure Sherry Ann will happily fill you in in the comments.
And finally, this week’s must-have release comes to us from the magnificent Tift Merritt, whose best-yet fourth album Another Country (and,
in particular, its harrowing, haunting title track, a five-minute master class in poignant, powerful songcraft) knocked us all pancake flat two years ago. Merritt is back with a spare new twelve-track set entitled See You on the Moon, which features a cameo appearance from My Morning Jacket’s
Jim James (who provides pitch-perfect harmony vocals on “Feel of the World”) and a sparse, stunning cover of Anne Murray’s classic smash “Danny’s Song.”
