Kendall Payne

KENDALL PAYNE
"JORDAN'S SISTER"
(Capitol, 1999)


Ten years before "Glee", co-creator Ryan Murphy started out in television with "Popular", an hour-long comedy-drama, also set in high-school and with a similarly larger-than-life style, that ran for two years on the WB network. Chosen for the theme song to the series was the track "Supermodels" from Kendall Payne's debut album "Jordan's Sister". It was the perfect choice: a pointed commentary on body image versus self-worth, a struggle that the majority of teenagers go through at some point, and one of the ongoing themes of the entire series. I loved the show and its theme song so much, that I decided it was worth giving the album a try.

For a debut album by a nineteen-year-old, "Jordan's Sister" is a remarkably mature work, and sees Kendall Payne following in the finest singer-songwriter tradition of her contemporaries like Paula Cole, Joan Osborne, and Sheryl Crow. Sure, she's got an assist from veteran, award-winning producer Ron Aniello, but listening to this album, one can easily get the impression that she probably didn't need his help. Just check out the tuneful, upbeat tracks "Hollywood", "Closer To Myself", and "It's Not The Time", or the beautiful, delicate ballads like "Honest", "On My Bones", and "Wonderland".

The album may not be perfect -- her lyrics are often straightforward instead of subtle, and can therefore tend to seem out-of-place alongside such keenly composed melodies -- and her strong religious faith occasionally forces its way into the songs, and I much prefer my music to stay cleanly secular -- but the songs as a whole are catchy and enjoyable enough that I can look past these arguable shortcomings. This was Ms. Payne's only major-label release, but she's kept recording on independent labels since then, her fourth and most recent album appearing in 2009.

Buy it digitally on iTunes
Buy it on CD from Amazon

Welcome To The 24th Century

Holy crap! Holy crap! Did you know about this? I didn't until yesterday! Holy crap!! If I'd known about this earlier, I wouldn't have bought the last dozen or so CDs I did buy (well, not necessarily the last consecutive dozen, but a dozen) and would have saved up for this instead! But I still bought it anyway, 'cause I just gotta have it. Seriously, I honestly don't know how I would be able to go on living without having this in my possession as soon as humanly possible. Want to know what it is? Maybe you'd better sit down, 'cause I myself had a geek-out on a transphasic level when I found out about this.

It's a limited-edition box set of not four, not six ... no, not even eight ... no, keep going ... would you believe a whopping 14 -- yes -- FOURTEEN CDs jam-packed with never-before-released music from dozens of episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"! Devoted solely to the work of Ron Jones, who traded off scoring duties with Dennis McCarthy through the first four seasons of "TNG", "Star Trek: The Next Generation -- The Ron Jones Project" includes nearly every note written and recorded for 42 of the series' first 94 episodes (the score for "The Best of Both Worlds" two-parter is already available on the GNP Crescendo label, so just some bonus tracks from it are included here) plus numerous outtakes, as well as a disc devoted to his work for a pair of "Trek" video games released later.

The panicked evacuation of the Enterprise in "11001001" ... the tearful farewell of Tasha Yar in "Skin of Evil" ... the appearance of the Romulans in "The Neutral Zone" ... Riker's escape from the Mintakans in "Who Watches The Watchers" ... the terrorist attack on the ship in "The High Ground" ... Lal's tragic demise in "The Offspring" ... the perilous journey across the arid wasteland in "Final Mission" ... they're all cues that I've been waiting 20 years to hear unobscured by dialogue and sound effects, and now's my chance! With this doozy of a package being limited to a production run of just 5,000, I couldn't waste any time in seizing the opportunity to add it to my collection, since the price is certain to only start going up on the aftermarket.

Widely regarded as the best composer that "Star Trek: The Next Generation" ever had, Ron Jones was known for delivering sweeping, attention-grabbing, feature-film-worthy scores for countless episodes. The problem was that "TNG"'s producers didn't want attention-grabbing music; they wanted the episodes' scores to lay quietly in the background. So after almost four full years of flying in the face of the producers' demands, Jones was fired and replaced by Jay Chattaway (quite a dandy composer in his own right, to give credit where it's due). But I always thought the "Trek" producers were not only making their episodes just a bit less memorable by taming down the music, but they were also forsaking a perfectly good merchandising outlet. Fans have been clamoring for Ron Jones' scores to be commercially available for years, and I have to wonder how many CD sales they missed out on by missing that opportunity and never licensing retail releases until all these years later.

If you can't live without it, like I couldn't, this incomparably amazing Trek-a-thon of music will set you back a healthy $150 (plus shipping), but at 14 CDs that ends up coming out to less than $11 per disc, which is a great price, especially for something that's a limited-edition collectible like this. It's available for purchase now at SAE and at Intrada, and further information is available from the Film Score Monthly website (and thanks to them for the links to the audio clips!). A friend of mine has all but challenged me to bundle it up in giftwrap when it arrives and not open it until Christmas morning ... but that's gonna be a really tough test of my will.

A. J. McLean

A. J. McLEAN
"HAVE IT ALL"
(Avex/Japan, 2010)


As far as his image and appearance are concerned, I never cared much for A. J. McLean, but I've always thought he had one of the best voices out of all the Backstreet Boys. So I was understandably pleased when I found out that he had released a solo album while I wasn't looking, and I didn't waste a whole lot of time in getting around to buying myself a copy.

By and large, A. J. McLean's solo debut sticks fairly close to the core Backstreet Boys sound: a mix of sweeping pop balladry ("London", "I Hate It When You're Gone") and energetic electro-tinged blue-eyed R&B ("Teenage Wildlife", "What It Do"), with a bit more of a leaning toward the latter. But at the same time, he does put just enough of his own mark on this set to make it unique. A. J. gets his Prince on with "Gorgeous", puts out a heartwrenching piano ballad on "Sincerely Yours", lays down a first-class Motown groove with "Love Crazy", and gives an entertaining try at a cross between Billy Joel and Gavin deGraw on the cheeky "I Quit".

As if that isn't enough, this album is a fine showcase of A. J.'s songwriting talents, since there isn't a song on it that he didn't have a hand in -- and, interestingly, two were co-written with one-time rival boyband singer-turned-solo-artist (and fellow two-initials-for-a-first-name guy) J. C. Chasez. I am a bit puzzled as to why this album wasn't released in the U.S., since I would have thought the domestic BSB audience is still strong enough to support one more of its members' side projects. But at any rate, with a debut this good, I sure hope this isn't the last we hear from a solo A. J.

Buy it on CD from Amazon

The Track 4 Hypothesis

Allow me to introduce you to "The Track 4 Hypothesis". A friend of mine once told me that, when he browses or shops for music, he pays particular attention to the fourth song of an album when checking out audio clips. It seems to have been a reliable gauge for him; a good track 4 bodes well for the rest of the disc. Ever since he shared this strategy with me, I've been tempted to put it to the test ... and now, some two years later, I've finally remembered to.

As it turns out, it's not an entirely half-baked theory. The other evening I perused my CD collection, surveying quite a few of my favorite albums and several other titles at random, to see just which songs lay in that normally unremarkable position in the track list. Many of the ones I found were more-or-less representative of the albums they're on, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how many favorite songs of mine just happen to reside on track 4. Among the most noteworthy, in no particular order:

• "Everything We Are", on The Shore's self-titled album
• "Boy Meets Girl", from Bleu's album "A Watched Pot"
• "Racing", Erik Faber's duet with Marte Wulff on his album "Passages"
• "Don't Say Sarah", that scrumptiously Hall-&-Oates-y tune on Wave's album "State of Mind"
• "Ghosts In My Machine", from Annie Lennox's album "Songs of Mass Destruction"
• "I Gotta Move", on Ben Kweller's self-titled album
• "Over You", by Matt Wertz on his album "Everything In Between"
• "It's Gotta Be You", that should-have-been-a-single on Backstreet Boys' opus "Millennium"
• "You Make Me", one of my all-time favorite "Weird Al" Yankovic tracks from his "Even Worse" album
• "That Girl", perhaps the best song on McFly's debut "Room On The 3rd Floor"

There are more, but I figure ten examples was more than enough. (I could have listed Ben Lee's "Catch My Disease" off his album "Awake Is The New Sleep", but since nearly every song on that album is great, finding a good one on track 4 was pretty-much a given.)

Of course, every rule has its exceptions, so there were a few albums I came across from which I can remember most of the songs, but in which case track 4 ended up being one of the forgettable ones (but not necessarily one of the worst), such as:

• "Tail of the Sun", on Stroke 9's album "Nasty Little Thoughts"
• "Kettle's On", from The Feeling's debut album "Twelve Stops And Home"
• "Save The Day", on Train's album "My Private Nation"

And then there were the ones that are memorable, but only for how unimpressive they were compared to the brilliance of the rest of the album:

• "Hollywood's Not America", from Ferras' album "Aliens & Rainbows"
• "Curly's Train", one of the less-appealing George Huntley penned songs by The Connells from their album "Still Life"
• "I'll Sue Ya", "Weird Al" Yankovic's bland nu-metal style parody on his album "Straight Outta Lynwood"
• "Just Got Paid", one of the duller gems (and one of two covers) on NSYNC's tour-de-force "No Strings Attached"

... and I've saved for last the most stunning example of all ...

• "Always In My Heart", the least impressive track by far on my favorite album ever, The Moffatts' "Submodalities"

So, the conclusion I've reached is that my friend's theory is pretty sound (no pun intended), as the average or outstanding examples seem to significantly outweigh the bad. I'm not sure if it'll change my shopping habits or not -- I usually take the time to sample as many sound clips of an album as I can before making a decision on whether or not to buy a title -- but I might end up paying a bit more attention to what's on track 4 than I used to.

David Archuleta

DAVID ARCHULETA
"THE OTHER SIDE OF DOWN"
(Jive, 2010)


"I've always been your token nice guy," sings David Archuleta on the track "Stomping The Roses", from his sophomore studio album "The Other Side of Down". That's not any great revelation to those of us who have followed the terminally adorable kid during and since his rise to runner-up of "American Idol" season 7. So it also shouldn't surprise us that there isn't any bitter heartache or sullen melancholy to drag down the mood of his latest release; instead, as with his debut, it's mostly either lightly wistful tunes about young love or optimistic anthems about the good things in life. But thankfully, none of the tracks are as off-puttingly adolescent as his first post-"Idol" single, "Crush".

He is still just nineteen years old, though, and with his boy-next-door demeanor and the sweetly husky voice we all fell in love with two years ago both still intact, it would seem wrong to expect any bitter heartache or sullen melancholy out of him quite yet. David has, however, jumped with both feet into the songwriting process, having co-written all but two of this album's songs, and just like he wowed us with his vocals, these first writing efforts show just as much potential. Some of my favorite tracks here are the lighter-than-air toe-tapper "Elevator", the soaring ballad "Parachutes And Airplanes", the soul-searching "Who I Am", and the rocking "Stomping The Roses" (co-written by Bryce Avary, better known by his artist name The Rocket Summer). The only thing I don't care for is the overuse of wordless refrains in the choruses of most of the songs on the first half of this album ... a trend whose popularity I trace back to (or, more to the point, blame on) Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

Most "Idol" artists follow a pattern in their album progression -- the first album is heavily commercial, professionally written and produced; the second is a comfortable step away, with a good amount of the singer's own input, but still very similar to their debut; and usually by the third album, the artist is able to deliver a sound that is fully of their own choosing, cutting the "Idol" strings once and for all. What do I hope to see David Archuleta do on his third album? By then he should be ready to move away from the white-boy-R&B that this album is peppered with, and more toward a pop or pop-rock style. Seeing as how he plays piano, he could easily take after Daniel Powter or Gavin deGraw.

Buy it digitally on iTunes
Buy it on CD from Amazon

Babies Got Back ... Covers!

I've probably touched before on why I enjoy CDs more than MP3s. Mostly what it comes down to is the tangibility, the "realness", of them. A digital music file isn't something I can hold in my hands and appreciate, or become sentimentally attached to and pull off the shelf to look at fondly several years later, or (not that I necessarily have this in mind when I shop) trade in for a little store credit should I lose interest in it at some point. Even better, my CDs won't vanish into thin air if my computer's hard drive ever crashes or my iPod gets lost or stolen. Not to mention the thrill of the hunt, the rush of the catch, and the pride of owning a hard-to-find title that often come with anything of a collectible nature -- and I do consider my CD library a "collection".

Another reason I like CDs is for their sometimes beautiful, sometimes provocative, sometimes amusing front cover art -- and their often underappreciated or flat-out unappreciated back covers. I just recently was reminded of this while I was consolidating some of my home-burned discs from separate, single-disc jewelcases into the space-saving double-disc cases -- a chore which, more than coincidentally, went hand-in-hand with re-designing said covers, which is just as fun a part of the mix-making process for me as assembling the track lists and burning the discs. I was about to consolidate one particular series of homemade compilations (now numbering eight volumes, so it'd save a fair little chunk of real-estate), but looking at the back covers I joyously toiled over so many moons ago, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of them.

Which brings me to the reason for this post: an ode of sorts to the rear cover art of compact discs. While their main purpose is of course to provide the track listing for the CD, perhaps in an attractive font and with a picture of some sort for a backdrop, the more imaginative designs take it to the next level by giving the track listing an interesting visual twist, or maybe even going so far as to make it a work of art in itself. A few of the more appealing designs I've come across in recent years include:

• NSYNC's "No Strings Attached", which carries over the carnival-like motif from the front cover by displaying each song's name in a variety of whimsically ornate typefaces ...

• Duran Duran's "Wedding Album", which stylized the title of each track to look like labels or clipped-out newspaper headlines ...

• Landon Pigg's debut album, "LP", in which the artist laid out a grid and gave each song title the "Pictionary" treatment ...

• Johnny Mathis' latest release, "Let It Be Me: Mathis In Nashville", featuring a beautifully nostalgic design of textured block letters in various heights, weights, and colors ...

• and (if I may be permitted to toot my own horn) the back cover design of my own that I'm perhaps most proud of, Volume 2 in my "I Love Music" series, made to look like the selection board on an old-fashioned jukebox, complete with a charmingly imperfect manual-typewriter look to the font.
  

Obviously, when I compact two or more discs into one jewelcase, it means twice as many songs to list, so I have to make far more efficient use of space in the layout, usually requiring me to eliminate my unique, "panoramic" designs in favor of the simplified, columnar listings that are my more practical fallback scheme. That's not to say that less artistic designs are any less appealing; sometimes the old saying "less is more" is totally true. Track listings can be laid out in neatly arranged columns or in the more flexible method of paragraphs, and they can be written in a minimalist sans-serif, a formal serif, or a casual script font.

But anything, in my opinion, is better than the cold, unartistic, bland and lifeless "system" font in which the track listings appear for each and every album in each and every user's iTunes library ... all of them exactly the same. Sure, iTunes gives us a JPG image of the album's front cover art (or we have to go hunt for it on the web ourselves), but that's only half the artwork. The back covers are oftentimes just as fun to look at as the front covers, because they're part of the graphic designer's vision ... and they're one of the things I'd miss most in a world without CDs.

Teddy Geiger

TEDDY GEIGER
"UNDERAGE THINKING"
(Columbia, 2006)


As big a Teddy Geiger fan as I am, I didn't bother checking out the 2008 movie he starred in, "The Rocker", until last night. Turns out it's a pretty decent movie, and Teddy a pretty decent actor ... and, of course, that is what prompted me to spotlight his major-label debut album today. I still remember being instantly impressed with this album back when it was released, and hoping that enough people would see beyond his "pretty-boy" exterior and his tender age to recognize the genuine talent he possessed.

From the dynamic debut single "For You I Will" and the earthy ballad "Thinking Underage", through the energetic "Air Dry" and soaring "Seven Days Without You", to the blue-eyed-soul bounce of "Possibilities" and the subdued anthem "Gentlemen", Teddy Geiger's softly raspy voice -- a pleasing blend of John Mayer and Ryan Cabrera -- and his all-American musical style -- which can at times sound as big-city as Billy Joel or as small-town as John Mellencamp -- never cease to charm and endear the listener. The beauty of Teddy Geiger is that he can be sweet without being saccharine, and he can be earnest without being naive ... which is tough for a boy of 17 to pull off.

The initial, March 2006, release of "Underage Thinking" was apparently enough of a success that Columbia issued a deluxe edition, with bonus tracks and an accompanying DVD, in October of the same year. I don't know if it was disappointing sales of the deluxe version (When will they learn that only the most die-hard fans will be willing to buy an album twice?!?) that caused Columbia to drop him from their roster, or if lackluster performance of the "Rocker" soundtrack (I was disappointed in it myself ... though the songs were sung by Teddy, they weren't written by him, and as such they lacked any real charm.) was to blame, but I've been left hanging ever since, hoping to see another album from him. Maybe I will ... eventually.

Buy it digitally on iTunes
Buy it on CD from Amazon

The La's

THE LA'S
"THE LA'S (DELUXE EDITION)"
(Universal, 2008)


I was about to write a review that slathered on the superlatives and waxed snobbish about how anybody who didn't recognize how great this album is just can't truly call themselves a music fan ... but then I realized I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I did. I'm actually a relative newcomer to The La's, at least as a serious listener. I'd had the cassette of this album back in the day, but didn't listen to it very much, and I might have picked up the CD once since then as an afterthought (so much of an afterthought that I still can't be sure I did) ... but when I found the recently released, 2-disc deluxe edition of the album at Rhino Records a few weeks ago, I finally decided I had to give them my full attention. I could now kick myself repeatedly for taking two whole decades to do so.

Few things in this world break my heart more than when an artist releases a truly brilliant album that could justifiably and without hyperbole be called a "masterpiece" -- and then abruptly ceases to exist as a recording artist. In the case of British jangle-power-pop band The La's, it was (according to the liner notes in this package by Ian Harrison) the intense perfectionism and arguable eccentricity of frontman Lee Mavers that all but doomed their discography to only one album, which itself was almost never released at all. This deluxe package contains both the original release of the album, produced by Steve Lillywhite; and an earlier, nearly-lost version, produced by Mike Hedges but aborted by Mavers.

Everyone has heard "There She Goes", one of the biggest singles of the early '90s, but that's hardly all this album has going for it. The irresistibly infectious and utterly hummable nature of each and every track make it little wonder that dozens of current bands cite The La's as an influence. There are so many heavenly songs on this damn-near-perfect album that I can't hope to single out any. In any sane world, this album would have been enough to keep this band from being consigned to the one-hit-wonder status that they now seem to forever be entombed in. Sigh ... so much for not slathering on the superlatives ... but once you hear this album, you'll understand.

Buy the deluxe edition digitally on iTunes
Buy the standard edition digitally on iTunes
Buy the deluxe edition on CD from Amazon
Buy the standard edition on CD from Amazon

The Big Reveal...

Hey, look! It's the new judges lineup on "American I..."

















...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

from the bookshelf: Record Store Days

I'll admit that I'm not much of a reader, but I've come across a handful of great books about music lately, so I figured I should chip away a bit at this blog's overwhelming dominance on audio and occasionally mention a book I think y'all might like. Here comes the first one...

"RECORD STORE DAYS: FROM VINYL TO DIGITAL AND BACK AGAIN"
by GARY CALAMAR and PHIL GALLO
(Sterling Publishing, 2010)


I was browsing the neighborhood B&N one day, idling in the aisle and talking on my cellphone -- something I almost never do in a store but maybe twice a year -- when I ended my call, nonchalantly glanced to my left, and saw this book staring me in the face. After thumbing through it for less than a minute, I knew I absolutely had to have it. Hey, a thick, attractive hardcover book about music stores, and for only twenty bucks? How could I not snap it up? It took me a couple months to finish reading it (mostly 'cause I'm not in the habit of regularly picking up a book, so I kept forgetting it was there), but I immensely loved every page of it.

"Record Store Days", by Gary Calamar and Phil Gallo, is an illustrated history of how changes over the years in technology, business, and culture, have shaped the evolution of American recorded music retailers, from their beginnings alongside the birth of the phonographic industry a century ago, through their grassroots groundswell and explosion into the mainstream in the '60s and '70s, up to the recent collapse of the mega-stores and the die-off of independents that brought about the creation of Record Store Day, the annual celebration that has galvanized the tenacity between the remaining retailers and their fiercely loyal customers.

What it might lack in atmospheric and enthralling narrative -- though it's well-structured by chapter and does share plenty of commentary and insight by a multitude of artists, record label insiders, and record retail veterans, it reads kind-of like a history textbook -- it makes up for in its snappy layout, which boasts hundreds of rare, exciting, and revealing black-and-white and full-color photographs, as well as some entertaining sidebars throughout. It features a foreword by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck (who, like many musicians, worked in a record store in his youth), and regularly mentions some of the most beloved and influential stores in the country, past and present ... a few of which I've patronized, which makes it all the more fun.

So, whether you're old enough to remember the glory days of record stores, or young enough to not get what all the fuss over them is about, whatever method you use to shop for and discover music, chances are this book will either re-kindle an appreciation for the past, or make you long to dip your toes into a world you might never have explored before ... a world that, in my opinion, every music lover should.