Posted on May 17, 2010 by DJ Chas

It’s a two-for-one 45 today. Both Mayer Hawthorne and James Pants appear on this Stones Throw “promotional use only” release that first appeared on March 17th at SXSW. Wish I could say that’s where I scored my copy, but no, mine came in the U.S. Mail. Aside from being a promo-only release, the cool thing about this 45 is that each artist is covering the work of the other.

Mayer Hawthorne takes on James Pants’ “Thin Moon,” while Pants reworks the Hawthorne tune, “Green Eyed Love.”

My personal tastes tend to skew more towards Hawthorne than Pants, but I like both sides of this release a great deal.

Simply put:  This is “make-out” or “doin’ it” music. Sure, flipping the platter on your turntable might break up the mood a little bit, but I would imagine those of you who like this will be playing an mp3 version anyway. So, you can just add it to the “doin’ it” playlist on your itunes. Incidentally, if you don’t have a heavy dose of soul on your “doin’ it” playlist, you either:  A.) Do Not Have a “doin’ it” playlist, or, B.) You are “doin’ it” wrong. I’m just sayin’…

On to the tracks…

The sides are labeled according to producer and original artist so, the JP side features Hawthorne doing “Thin Moon” and the MH side features James Pants doing “Green Eyed Love”  Make sense?

JP Side (Mayer Hawthorne) Side:

Ok, I like the pure soul sound Mayer strives for on this. I really dig his falsetto and love the instrumentation on this.  Hawthorne strips the original of its digital electronic sound and delivers a really sweet soul ballad.

MH (James Pants) Side:

Pants takes the soul balladry of Hawthorne’s track and adds tons of digital effects, synths,  and a vocoder or auto-tuner. It’s not Framptonesque or Cher “Do You Believe” style or Lil’ Wayne or T-Pain or whoever else employs these things these days. It has a unique  sound, but something about his stuff always makes me feel like he digs 80’s sounds and technologies. Regardless, I am a fan of this as well.

So there you go, stepping off my funk train for a couple of choice cuts to slow it down a bit for the lovers.

Enjoy.

– DJ Chas at The UnCool

The UnLive | 45 Review: Mayer Hawthorne and James Pants10.0103