Brandon's Buzz

Fall’s new music slate looms large, but for this week at least, it’s still awfully lean out there, with only one major release vying for attention. If one-day sales reports are to be believed, however, that one release is looking competitive to be the crunchy’s best-selling album by week’s end. Dig in:

My startling lack of use for one Sara Bareilles and her relentlessly cheery brand of power pop has been documented well in a handful of previous Buzz posts. Regardless, I am man enough to admit that I find myself utterly intoxicated by “King of Anything,” the masterfully melodic lead single from Bareilles’ sophomore album, Kaleidoscope Heart, which makes landfall this week. I have not a clue how the remainder of this record sounds — and, for all I know, “King” is an anomaly and Heart is otherwise more of the same — but I think Sara still deserves major props for stepping outside the box and seeing where the groove might take her, and I’m greatly looking forward to seeing where it might take me. (Take note: Target has an exclusive deluxe version of Heart, which contains three bonus tracks, including a strings-laden acoustic take on “King.”)

(more…)

Chantal Kreviazuk — “Surrounded”
(from Under These Rocks and Stones) —

Another discussion for another day is why, in spite of her status as a go-to writer of agile, dependably catchy pop tunes (her work has been snapped up by the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Gwen Stefani, even my beloved Hilary Duff), the magnificent Kreviazuk has never — at least not here in the States, despite having crafted four exquisite, exhilarating albums — become the megastar she has always, always deserved to be. This one — a wrenching portrait of a best friend’s senseless suicide — knocked me flat when I first heard it thirteen years ago, and it still gets me where I live. Every time.