What We're Listening To - JAY Z and Kanye West's Watch The Throne

The long awaited collab of hip-hop's two reigning titans arrived this week, after fits and starts and a lock down so tight no one heard it until they said so.

And it's good. Not great by any stretch, but it shows Jay-Z back in good form and Kanye finding the sweet spot he hit on MBDTF and keeping it going.

When H.A.M. dropped, I was admittedly not impressed. That gaudy single art, the lackluster lazy rhyming, the trash heap beats. Then came the threat of a full collab album, something Jay has quite frankly never been able to pull off. Need I remind you of Best of Both Worlds AND Unfinished Business? Not to mention Collision Course and The Dynasty.

And Kanye, notoriously a weak rapper, has been growing lyrically and eating Jay for lunch. Where Jay killed it on Diamonds from Sierra Leone, Ye destroyed it on Run This Town and Haters.

But here we are, and in a weird bit of alchemy, all these elements that together should make a miserable album instead create a solid experience.

They've invited a ton of friends to come lamp: Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver. It is an album that is singularly Kanye's vision in its scope, size and production. Prime example: they paid nothing short of a trillion dollars to clear Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. It was 100 percent worth it and shows the two at their most comfortable. No hooks, horns and an Otis Redding that go nowehere, it feels simultaneously fresh and a throwback to early Kanye. Gotta Have It samples a skittish James Brown, with some assist from the Neptunes, you can tell this is going to be a party.

Jay-Z over his entire career has never dreamed this big (his masterpiece The Blueprint is remarkable for its restraint and smoothness). And at times he gets swallowed in. You would think New Life, a RZA coproduced track sampling Nina SImone would be perfect. And the idea is great: two guys rapping to their unborn children. But Jay doesn't do sentimentality (exception: Song Cry), and Kanye never sounds sincere (I find it hard to breathe in when the next track is That's My Bitch).

But when it shines, it burns bright. Niggas in Paris is possibly my favorite track on the album, built off of frantic rapping, a tapping high hat and synth, and some nonsense half bits from Ye and Jigga.

What is the end to this collaboration? These two have been appearing on each other's records for a solid decade now, so this is nothing new. I'm glad to see whatever falling out they had has been resolved. Ye still is looking up to his Big Brother, and in some ways, Jay-Z still needs Kanye to stoke that fire and hunger. But where this album leaves us I'm not quite sure.

Buy JAY Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne from Amazon's MP3 Store

What We're Watching - Yuna's Come As You Are

It is no doubt ballsy to cover a Nirvana song. It's fairly iconic, and you want to make it your own, but you really can't improve too much on the original.

So to cover something as haunting and lyrically loaded as "Come As You Are", seems like an idea that might be better to walk away from.

Yuna, with her debut EP Decorate out on the FADER label, brought her minimalist approach to the track. But instead of the guitar singer songerwriter vibe she gives off, the cover is backed with a drum machine, some tinkling keyboard, skitter skatter electric noises, and her haunting ethereal voice.

There's no way you believe her when she croon "No I don't have a gun."



You can stream Yuna's Decorate EP at Soundcloud

Buy Yuna's Decorate EP at the Amazon MP3 Store

What We're Listening To - Dawes' Nothing is Wrong

I'm always amazed at the different sounds that come from LA. Maybe because of my East Cost leanings, but it seems like every lost dreamer and wandering soul who picks up a guitar out there coaxes a completely different sound out of it. When I read about the revival of LA rock, I'm continually baffled, not by the bands (because they are good) but by the fact anyone would try and lump that into one box.

Case in point: dusty American rockers Dawes, who are remains of previous post punkers that fell in love with some vinyl from CSNY, Graham Parsons, The Band and Jackson Browne at some point. Their sophomore album Nothing is Wrong is a marvelous slow build of harmonies, gentle folk guitars and wandering lyrical tales.

"You got that special kind of sadness. You got that tragic sense of charms that only comes from time spent in Los Angeles" Taylor Goldsmith sings on the album opener, and you know he's talking about a girl, but maybe himself a little bit. It's mostly hazy tales of love, growth and fishing for understanding on the album, redefining Americana a little bit. I tend to lose them when they slow down too much, and songs like Moon in the Water or So Well tend to fade too much into the background. But When Dawes shines on tracks like If I Wanted Someone, The Way You Laugh and Coming Back to a Man, it holds my focus intently.

It makes me want to drive, though not necessarily to LA. Dawes is evoking a picture of America far from LaLaland. But maybe that is America.

Listen to Dawes' If I Wanted Someone on Hard of Hearing Ep  013

Buy Dawes' Nothing is Wrong from Amazon mp3

What We're Listening To - The Postelles s/t

And here comes summer, skipping over spring with a fiery sustained furnace blast for the past two weeks.

A break from the heat would be entirely all to welcome. But if we didn't have summer heat, we'd have no reason for cookouts, pool parties and all night hangouts.

So I'm thankful for the summer heat like I'm thankful for the self titled debut album from The Postelles, a fun dancey rock album. It keys up on tail end of the surf rock from last year, but crossed with the pop rock catchiness of The Strokes, Weezer or Arctic Monkeys. This makes sense since Strokes' guitarist Albert Hammond Jr produced it. It's clean and not a note out of place throughout. Think a slightly older Surfer Blood.

Sing along choruses start bright and big from the album opener and keep going til the end. White Night, Sleep on the Dance Floor, and 123 Stop are party starters for sure. The lyrics don't run too deep (Boys Best Friend is a jokey little tale about falling in love with a lesbian). It does get mildly repetitive, but that's okay cos as soon as it starts it's over. No one's gonna blame you for hitting repeat.

I'd recommend going to catch them on tour this summer, and if you're in DC see them 11 JUNE at Red Palace.

Buy The Postelles's self titled debut album

Buy from Amazon

Singled Out - John Legend covers Adele's Rolling in The Deep

So arguably the year's biggest single so far has been Adele's Rolling in The Deep. The girl can sing, though I was so underwhelmed by her first album, it's taken me sometime to warm up to her sophomore effort, which is much brighter.

But at the Childish Gambino show last week, they closed out with John Legend's cover of the song. Bare, no music, just his incredible voice with a gospel choir backing him up. It's powerful.

You can download the song from the link for free.

John Legend - Rolling in the Deep (Adele Cover) by johnlegend

Things We Love - Amazon Cloud Drive and Player (and Google too at some point)

I started writing this post in fits and starts. I just sort of left it in the drafts pile, would come back and massage it a bit. I was going to pull the trigger last week, but couldn't find a decent graphic.

And now Google has gone and stolen my thunder with its Music by Google site. And it's storage is 20 times more than Amazon's right now for free (but unsure how free for long).

Which is awesome. More companies saying "fuck off" to major music labels and refusing to negotiate with terrorists is a good thing. Maybe this will part the waters for other companies like Spotify (which I loathe).

I still advocate Amazon over iTunes as the place to best spend your musical bucks. And since you can't buy from Google right now, Amazon wins that battle too. The Cloud Drive/Player and Google Music are changing the game radically and positioning Amazon and Google a thousand steps ahead of iTunes in digital retailer industry. The labels are hoping that Apple's cloud offering will be super fancy awesome and make Google and Amazon's look like crap. I doubt it. The've been on the wrong side of every big industry decision since Napster, and have paid the price in declining sales ever since.

But why is this so game changing?

First, Amazon and Google didn't bargain, negotiate or even notify the the major labels about their moves. Why should they? The arcane notion that labels must issue you a license on how and where you can listen to your music is dumb and a holdover from before the advent of high speed connections and cloud storage. If you buy it, you should be able to listen to it how you please, whether you store it in the cloud or on your phone or on your computer.

Second, Amazon (and at some point Google too) is making purchasing music easier than iTunes. Doesn't matter where you are (work, friend's house, laptop downstairs away from your desktop), you can buy an album, and then download it later to where you want it. They both make it easy to play on your Android device (earlier this week CloudPlayer loaded some muddled iOS play functionality).

Finally, it's easy. It doesn't take a degree in computer science to make it work. Your music is accessible whenever you want it. Just click a button to play, listen or download.

Amazon has 1,500 albums on sale for $5 each this month. Start your cloud storage up today.

What We're Listening To - Amor de Dias' Street of the Love of Days

If you haven't been paying attention, Merge Records has been churning out an incredible string of must have albums in 2011. Telekinesis, Apex Manor, Mountain Goats, Times New Viking, Wye Oak, and Destroyer have added more trophies to a case already struggling under the weight of other great albums.

Adding to that list is the debut from Amor de Dias, the new duo featuring Alasdair MacLean of The Clientle and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of Pipas. Street of the Love of Days is a fantastic album, echoing the gentle Brazilian samba and bossa nova of Getz/Gilberto/Jobim. It is one of the most gorgeous releases I have heard all year.

Recorded over three years with the help of friends and when they had time from their various tours and main bands, Núñez-Fernández and MacLean are two peas in a pod complenting each other perfectly. Lupe occassionally sings in Spanish, to delightful effect on songs like Wandering and Late Mornings. Alasadair takes lead some, cooing on House on Flint to come dance, an altogether pleasing comeon. But the song and album sounds like a dream you can barely catch, so lounging lazily seems like a better activity.

If you're looking for something to help you fill upcoming weekend morning at home or those afternoons that meander into dusk, Amor de Dias' Street of the Love of Days will fit that bill nicely.

Street of the Love of Days will be available 17 May 2011.

Buy Amor de Dias' Street of the Love of Days from Merge Records