Since back in October when I first heard the new Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavillion, and later enthusiastically trekked through a windswept rainstorm to a listening party at Manhattan's River Room -- an oddly swelegant bar/restaurant ("Harlem's Tavern on the Green") perched hard on the Hudson River at the end of an endless concrete walkway off Riverside Drive -- I've be

Remember when listening to a Kanye West album didn't feel like mowing the yard or cleaning out the gutters or changing a diaper? You know, work you don't get paid for?

808's and Heartbreak, Kanye West's fourth solo record was released yesterday, after months of hype and debate, and weeks of leaked tracks, all of which feature the stricken producer/MC singing and half-rapping about lost love (primarily his broken engagement to designer Alexis Phifer) via the audio processor infamously known as Auto-Tune.

Unless you had taped episodes of Gossip Girl, True Blood, 30 Rock, The Office, Skins, and Yo Gabba Gabba! to watch (like me), then Wednesday night's Country Music Awards was txt-yr-BFFz appointment television. Why?