As far as recent debut albums go, you would be hard pressed to find one as innovative and downright strange as Gnarls Barkley’s St Elsewhere, an electro soul/ hip hop hybrid about death and insanity set somewhere off the shoulder of Orion.
Needless to say, the album won the hearts and minds of consumers and critics alike, shifting over 3.6 millionunits worldwide and spawning the ridiculously popular single ‘Crazy’, which was the first song to reach number one in the UK on download sales alone.
Impressive stuff, but it also poses the inevitable question: “How on god’s green earth do you go about topping it?” Well, the Gnarls duo – DJ Danger Mouse and high pitched warbler Cee Lo – aim to show us with their hugely anticipated sophomore effort The Odd Couple. But do they succeed?
They say:
The Canadian Press: “The Odd Couple doesn’t feature a ‘Crazy’-level supersmash, but they still wed dark emotions with compelling beats.”
Entertainment Weekly: “A compulsively listenable, if somber, effort.”
musicOMH: “As a sophomore effort intended to expand on the power and energy of their debut St Elsewhere, it falls noticeably short.”
We say:
Let’s get straight to it: there’s nothing on The Odd Couple as infectious as ‘Crazy’. Sure, the funked up, strung out lead single ‘Run’ tries its darndest, but in the end is going to captivate no one but the chemically stimulated.
More worryingly still, there’s little here as fresh or wildly imaginative. Cee Lo’s characters continue to examine their feelings of alienation and loss, his helium soul voice resembling an unhinged Al Green being repeatedly kicked in the nuts, while Danger Mouse cooks up his familiar brand of rapid fire hip pop beats and moody, carnival gone wrong atmospherics.
The bass heavy ‘Charity Case’ and sci fi ska tinged ‘Whatever’, for example, are both fairly good songs, but have a strong whiff of déjà vu about them without ever matching the excitement and adventure of St Elsewhere’s aforementioned global hit or, say, ‘Go Go Gadget Gospel’.
So while The Odd Couple is indeed an aural treat, you cannot deny it is essentially Gnarls Barkley on autopilot, happy to revisit old haunts rather than explore new terrain. And that’s disappointing.
Like this? Try these:
Gnarls Barkley – St Elsewhere
Gorillaz – Demon Days
OutKast – Stankonia
RELEASED
31st Mar ‘08
LABEL
Warner
POSTED...
Sun 30 Mar at 8:28pm
