Brandon's Buzz

With all the Buzz’s talk of birthdays, I s’pose I’d be remiss if I didn’t reveal that today is my 32nd. A already spilled the beans in the guestbook early this morning, so now he has a proper forum.

Coming this week: a surprisingly charitable review of the new Coldplay record, a tribute to my all-time favorite soap opera, and a post entitled “Lessons from a Fun-as-Hell Road Trip.” As you can tell, I’m having a bit of trouble getting into the groove again following my vacation, but hang in there. The Buzz is ’bout to come back swingin’.

“I swear, this whole state makes my hair frizzy and makes me look like I washed my face with Crisco.”

— the marvelous Sherry Ann, waxing poetic on Louisiana and its numerous charms

One of country music’s most beloved and respected artists looks back to the roots of her raisin’ with a challenging yet oddly comforting new project. Infused with the spirit and sound of warm, heart-tugging bluegrass, Coal finds the estimable Kathy Mattea continuing to stretch the staid boundaries of her creativity in search of a rich, resonant truth. Devastated by the recent rash of fatal mining disasters, and haunted by her own West Virginian upbringing (as the child from a significant lineage of black-lunged, sunken-cheeked coal miners), Mattea channels her own conflicted emotions and her own honey-sweet voice into eleven traditional dirges and spirituals.

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The long-awaited release of an almost twenty year old classic sitcom, plus the latest works from a pair of relative newcomers who seem poised for strong second acts, highlight the coming week. Let’s dive right in:

Two years ago, a percussive thriller called Boys and Girls in America — a wild blast that whipped hints of country, rock, blues, and straight-up punk into one frothy hell of a fucked-up fromage — punched The Hold Steady‘s ticket to the big time. Looking to build on that buzz, the group — led by the gruff Craig Finn (and don’t ask me why the stark contrast between dark voice and light lyric works this well) — is up this week with its fourth album, Stay Positive.

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A is in town this weekend for a whirlwind visit, and Sherry Ann will arrive bright and early Monday morning, whereupon the three of us are embarking on a tiny l’il road trip (or, as Sherry called it when we spoke last week, “a big gay adventure!”). My plan as of now is to pre-tape a few Buzz posts (at least a quotable or two, plus next week’s record store report and, ideally, a new playlist) so that my absence at the helm is not quite so obvious; regardless of whether that idea succeeds or fails, the Buzz will resume normal activity on Thursday, July 17. Among the first topics of discussion at that time: a salute to one of television history’s most groundbreaking and terrific series, which next week marks its 40th (!) year on the air. Trust me — you don’t want to miss that.

On a related note, the Buzz is almost certainly going to notch its 3000th pageview some time this weekend (we’re sitting somewhere in the 2980s as I type this, according to WordPress’ stats), which truly does blow my mind. I considered this wacky experiment a smashing success all the way back on April 22, when — on all of the fourth day of the Buzz’s then-tenuous existence — I actually managed to think of a worthy, valid topic for a strong third post. (Honest to God, all you have to do to understand just why most blogs stall in the very early-going is start one.) Now, 74 posts, 23 post categories, 267 post tags, and nearly thirty hundred look-sees later, I’m utterly speechless by the unfailing support and encouragement you’ve all shown both the Buzz and its chief cook and bottle washer. I seriously adore you guys.

“Roland Emmerich wanted to buy my book Mephisto and Onyx to do a movie, and he came to the house. First of all, he’s nine and a half feet tall, which immediately annoys me, because at five foot five, nine foot five people piss me off. So, I made him sit down…. He’s a very nice guy. He has a German accent, and he talks like a valley girl… and I don’t mean to be making fun of him, but this is really the reason I didn’t let him do the movie. He said, [adopts a heavy German brogue] ‘Well, when I made Stargate, you see, like, it was, like, it was, I had to, like, like, I had to get a movie that was really, would go back in time but, like, it was….’ And I said to him, ‘Excuse me, excu—” and he doesn’t listen. He’s still talking! And the person that was with him said, ‘Roland, Roland, Harlan’s trying to say something.’ And [Roland] said, ‘What? Like, what? Like, like, what is it?’ And I said, ‘If you say ‘like’ once more, I will nail your head to this coffee table.'”

— the brilliant Harlan Ellison, discussing the “return” of sci-fi with Tom Snyder in 1996

Only because I can recall every single one of them with a frightening, crystalline clarity (and, also, because it sometimes seems like only twenty-five minutes have passed since the halcyon days of 1984), it’s very nearly incomprehensible to believe that twenty-five years stand between today and our very first delectable taste of George Michael and of his indescribable talent. To mark this milestone, to coincide with his first world tour since 1990, and, perhaps most importantly, to remind the populace of American music consumers — an entire generation of which has grown up recognizing Michael as nobody more than the strange Brit who flashed an undercover cop in a Beverly Hills bathroom, rather than as the brilliant Brit who grew up to become the finest, most eloquent, most engaging pop star the world has produced in the last thirty years — that he’s not only still alive, but still kickin‘, honey, King George’s TwentyFive, a two-disc, 29-track collection of classics that reaches all the way back to Michael’s Wham! days, has finally been granted a stateside release. (In a slightly altered version, TwentyFive has been available overseas for eighteen months now.)

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“Kenny Chesney’s Songs Sound the Same After a While”

— the headline from a Reuters review of Chesney’s recent Nashville gig

A pair of deluxe re-releases — one of them absolutely deserved, and the other nothing more than a desperate attempt to boost a waning album’s relevance — highlight the latest report from the front lines. So without further ado, I give you this week’s music roster:

Said to be his strongest, most sonically satisfying effort since Odelay, the 1997 Grammy-winning classic that ensured he would be remembered as much more than a flukish one-hit wonder, Beck returns this week with Modern Guilt, a sleek, tight ten track collaboration with Danger Mouse (otherwise known as the crazy (-ier?) half of Gnarls Barkley). The advance reviews on Guilt have been downright orgasmic; only time will tell if they have any basis in reality.

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In a wretched twist of fate this evening, my iPod’s battery died, and I keep forgetting to return the charger to my truck. To entertain myself, therefore, for the nearly two-hour drive home from Austin, I was forced to listen to the, ahem, radio. (!) And if you’ll allow, I’d like to share a few impressions from that traumatic experience:

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“Lose the refined white sugar, refined white flour, and refined white men.”

— Susan Powter, explaining her new credo to Elle magazine in 2006.

A certain mismatch on paper, yet a striking triumph in practice, modern troubadour M. Ward (best known for his work with Beth Orton, Norah Jones, and Bright Eyes) and rising actress Zooey Deschanel (whose biggest claim to fame is almost certainly her bitterly raw turn opposite Paul Schneider in 2002’s gut-wrenching love story All the Real Girls, and who is still slated to portray the iconic Janis Joplin in Penelope Spheeris’ oft-delayed biopic) have joined forces to create the duo She & Him. Having first collaborated on an end-credits tune for the 2007 independent film The Go-Getter, Ward and Deschanel enjoyed the experience so much that they decided to tackle a full-length project, and She & Him, Volume 1 was born.

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I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: in the wild madness that is the contemporary music scene, the toughest hurdle to cross must be crafting a stellar follow-up after your debut scores a bullseye. (Like, for instance, aren’t you just dying to see what fresh magic The Fray and Amy Winehouse and Snow Patrol are going to conjure to try to top their initial breakthroughs? The old saying — that one about “you have your whole life to write and record your first album, and you have six months to a year to write and record your second” — really is true, and some artists — like David Gray, who followed up his stunning starburst White Ladder with the even stronger A New Day at Midnight; or Train, whose magnificent thunderbolt “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)” blasted them right past the dreaded sophomore slump — navigate that pressure more gracefully than others.)

Add to the former category San Diego rock band Augustana, whose blisteringly brilliant 2005 debut album All the Stars and Boulevards was one for the time capsule. Led by the surprise radio smash “Boston” — I defy you to name me another top 40 radio staple from the last decade that has no chorus whatsoever — and buffered by one boffo song after another, from the sensationally fiery opener “Mayfield” to the devastating album closer “Coffee and Cigarettes” (to say nothing of the socko title track, already on the shortlist of this new century’s very best singles), Boulevards was (and remains) an intoxicating, intricately constructed marvel.

The band (led by the extraordinary Dan Layus, whose wise voice always seems to know just when to slump and just when to soar) has just released Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt, its second full-length effort and quite a worthy successor to Boulevards. While it lacks outright even one individual track that matches the intense power of any of Boulevards‘ MVPs (though the sinewy “Hey Now” and the mournful “Fire” each come awfully damn close), Can’t Squared overflows with the same brand of glorious, bittersweet piano-based melodies that put these guys on the map three years ago. It’s a don’t-fix-what-ain’t-broke triumph for the ultra-talented Layus — for whom stardom seems absolutely predestined — and his comrades, who seem to be just one more radio hit away from the big time and who, at worst, have just proven definitively that their masterful debut was no fluke.