Reviews
Gnarls Barkley
St. Elsewhere
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2006-05-31
You can see it happening, the climb to the top that Gnarls Barkley is on. A few weeks ago, their first single ("Crazy" -- maybe you've heard it?) hit the top of the UK charts; it's now been there for nine weeks. Meanwhile, the North American assault has begun; the song is now at No. 13 on the Canadian airplay chart and No. 38 on the Billboard Top 100 chart. I heard it several times this weekend, just walking around and popping into stores; I don't listen to commercial radio on a regular basis, so that tells you something about the airplay it's getting.
I'll go out on a limb and say that even if Cee-Lo Green and DJ Dangermouse are sick of hearing it, the general public hasn't tired of "Crazy" yet. The airplay is only the start -- there's also the street team that's clearly been hired to paper Toronto with "Gnarls Barkley is crazy" posters, and the massive upward trajectory they're showing on Google Trends. Whether the single's being withdrawn or not, "Crazy" is poised to be the next "Hey Ya," the song of the summer.
So the crucial question is this: does Gnarls Barkley have more than just one great track on their debut album, St. Elsewhere? "Crazy" certainly serves as a fine introduction to the joint project between Dangermouse -- a producer/artist best known for mashing up Jay-Z and the Beatles -- and Green -- a fine rapper not as well known as he ought to be. The group's members each have fine pedigrees of their own. And certainly, not every band that ends up as a one-hit wonder deserves that status. But sometimes one killer, huge song can overshadow everything else an album has to offer. So does St. Elsewhere manage to live up to the promise of its first single? The answer is for the most part, yeah, actually.
St. Elsewhere hits on a wide range of influences -- Motown, alt-rock, hip-hop, even Lugosi-style monster movie score, a little -- and filters it all through the wacked-out soul of Gnarls Barkley, an imaginary figure described by Green and Dangermouse as an older gentleman who owes the former $35. Imagination plays a strong role on this record -- there are songs about monsters in the closet, hot dead girls, the rules of interior design. Then there are songs about more traditional fare, like depression and the messed-up relationship detailed in "Crazy." What ties it all together are Green's oddly-appealing voice and Dangermouse's distinctive beats.
As it ends up, "Crazy" is actually the most straightforward song on St. Elsewhere. The album opens with "Go Go Gadget Gospel," which is a great showcase for Green's voice and gets things started with a gospel chorus backed against a manic beat and horns. "St. Elsewhere" brings things down a little after "Crazy" with a slower beat and a melancholy chorus ("Whenever you need me I'll be here/Until then my dear/I'm going, I'm going, going there/Don't ask me to make time"). "Smiley Faces" -- whose lyrics are a little darker than the upbeat music and title would have you believe -- would make a great second single, with its Motown-inspired rythm section.
From there we move into the monster movie music of "The Boogie Monster" with Green creepily intoning "I've got a monster in my closet/Someone's underneath my bed/The wind's knocking at my window/I'd kill it but it's already dead." This is a song that probably appeals most to fans of DJ Dangermouse's album. Other tracks of note include a cover of a Violent Femmes song ("Gone Daddy Gone") and a Spanish guitar-infused weeper with great drum beats ("Just A Thought"). Not every song is a winner; "Feng Shui" has a stylish beat but doesn't pull off the balance between serious musicianship and not-serious lyrical content as well as other tracks on the album. "Who Cares" doesn't grab me like the tracks that bookend it -- "Transformer" and "On-line" -- do. Every once in a while the album suffers from the same problem that Oceans 12 did, where the creators seem to be having a bit more fun than the audience. But on the whole, this is a disc full of song that sound like nothing you've heard this year; the best comparison I can think of is MIA's Arular -- the sonic influences are not the same, but the pastiche is (fitting, since the album was put together partly by mailing bits back and forth). It's a tricky thing, to take a bunch of disparate influences and bring them together into something that sounds fresh and whole. St. Elsewhere doesn't quite hit the target dead-centre, but it gets pretty close.
I'm not going to finish this review up by saying that lightning doesn't strike twice -- that's not true, for one thing, and there are plenty of tracks on St. Elsewhere that prove that Gnarls Barkley has more to offer than just one great soul-pop track. Let's just hope that "Crazy" doesn't end up overshadowing the rest of it; I hope this project finds the balance between success and oversaturation, because I want Green and Dangermouse to come out for a second round.
Score: 8.3
- Terri