Link: Gnarls Barkley Homepage and Gnarls Barkley MySpace Page.
The Inside Pulse: Hip-Hop producer Danger Mouse has had quite a ride lately. He first popped up on the music radar in early 2004 with The Grey Album, his mashup of Jay-Z vocals from The Black Album and Beatles music from The White Album. He went on to produce The Gorillaz’ smash Demon Days before hooking up with underground fave MF Doom to create DangerDoom’s The Mouse and the Mask. Now, he’s partnered up with former Goodie Mob frontman Cee-Lo Green to form Hip-Hop/Neo-Soul supergroup Gnarls Barkley. Is their new album St. Elsewhere everything you’d imagine a collabo between these two inimitable entities would be?
Positives: Cee-Lo has one of the most unique voices in Hip-Hop, and Danger Mouse is the perfect producer for him to work with, framing his high-pitched squeal with bouncy, almost schizophrenic beats that meld together to create a sound unlike anything else out there today. Their first single, “Crazy”, is one of those perfect songs that stick in your brain, refusing to dislodge itself to make room for something else. Cee-Lo’s squeaky falsetto meshes with Mouse’s bouncy yet melancholy track to fabricate ear candy of the highest order. “The Boogie Monster” is the song Smiling Jay Hawkins would make today if he were still alive, with Cee-Lo delivering a bassy vocal for Mouse’s dark production to swirl around. Their rendition of Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone”, with its staccato synths and stuttering drums, will make you forget it’s a remake. And “Transformer”, with its hyperkinetic beats taking Cee-Lo’s flow for a wild ride, will make you remember why Goodie Mob was one of the most criminally underrecognized groups in Hip-Hop history.
Negatives: None. This is as close to pop perfection as you could ask for.
Cross-breed: Seal mixed with André 3000’s The Love Below with Booker T. and the MG’s providing backing music.
Reason to buy: Because when people look back 10 or 20 years from now at the year 2006 in music, this will be one of, if not THE, defining albums of the year. Whenever someone talks about pop music like it’s a four-letter word, you can pop this CD in and show them just how wrong they are.
