plorentz's Full Review: St. Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley
I don't remember much from my old high school chemistry class. I spent a lot of that time hovering around the back of the room talking about that new Peter Cetera single with my friend Geoff. But I remember vividly the day we all got to cut off a pasty chunk of sodium and drop it into a petrie dish of water. Water, of course, is totally harmless - but throw some sodium into it and woo-hoo. But listening to St. Elsewhere, the new CD by Gnarls Barkley, a collaboration between producer Danger Mouse and freaky southern hip-hop maestro Cee-Lo Green, I find myself wondering what might have happened if we'd gotten to toss that chunk of sodium into something a little more volatile - like, I don't know, ammonia or something. I have no idea what would happen. Like I said, I wasn't paying much attention. But I'm sure something would. But then again, I wonder how spectacular it might be. Maybe it wouldn't be so spectacular at all, given what we might be expecting to happen. Which is why I suppose our science teachers have us throw sodium in water. It certainly made me think of water differently.
Musically speaking, Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse are both volatile substances. Each man boasts a set of properties that makes him seem dangerous and unpredictable. Danger Mouse, of course, produced one of the most notorious mash-ups ever in the form of The Grey Album, thereby, almost single-handedly elevating the mash-up (where, by the suddenly very accessible wonders of digital technology, just about anyone can take two - or three, or four, or whatevermany - songs and mash them together into a remix - The Grey Album mashed up elements of the Beatles' White and Jay-Z's Black albums) to the level of attention-must-be-paid artform. Cee-Lo, on the other hand, is the kind of hip hop artist that scares a good deal of hip hop listeners, even as he demands their attention rap-singing in a Pentecostal gospel falsetto, and drawing upon an apparent encyclopedia of cultural and pop-cultural touchstones (on his most recent solo album, he introduces one particularly nasty battle rap by singing a spot-on "Miss Celie's Blues" from The Color Purple) for his craft. (You just know when he sings "Transformer" here that he's thinking of the coolest action figures a 3rd Grader could hope to get for Christmas in 1985).
The mind sort of boggles when we try to pre-assess - hypothesize, as Mr. Nold would say - what might happen should these two eccentrics ever find themselves in the same petrie dish. But while St. Elsewhere is certainly an exciting, frenzied thing to behold, the fact is that it's never as exciting as we might have expected. It's loud and garish and wants desperately to be innovative and fun, but it largely comes off a little disorganized and scattered, wound up like a six-year-old given 37 minutes to play with every single toy at the FAO Schwarz - so thrilled to be there that he doesn't know where to start.
The ADD factor is in full, unmedicated effect here with song titles like "Go-Go Gadget Gospel" - the gloriously excessive opener - and song lengths that rarely top the three minute mark; circular lyrics ("I'm afraid 'cause I have no fear") that dance around issues of self-control and psychological well-being, at times veering into gross-out territory ("Necromancer") or merely devolving into the silly. "The Boogie Monster" is a lewd Halloween party gag that Cee-Lo sings in his best Frankenstein voice; and in the mercifully brief (even by this record's standards) "Feng Shui", Cee-Lo likens his rhyming skills to a method of tasteful, harmonic, peace-conducive home decor. Sure, it's kinda funny, but it's kinda ridiculous too.
And it's also, strangely, a little true: The best tracks here are the ones with the least studio clutter. Songs like the lead single "Crazy" (a huge hit in the U.K. already) are theatrical because of how minimal they are. Cee-Lo sings a contemplative, questioning verse over little more than an artificially induced bass-line and some haunted samples of soul choirs - the effect is a soaring old-school soul ballad with an irresistibly classic summer radio sound to it. "Just a Thought" is a confession of quiet desperation ("and I've tried everything but suicide, but it's crossed my mind") delivered in a tearful voice over the folksy plucking of strings, made nervy and unreal and 3:30 a.m. creepy by a weird wah-wah synth and the insistent stop-starting of a brutal, sonically damaged beat. Of course, one of the disc's most unexpected pleasures is a straight-up cover of the Violent Femmes' cult classic "Gone Daddy Gone" - all canned drums, skinny tie guitars and synthesizer bass lines, this version sounds more 1982 than the 1982 original.
It's hard to fault the album's inventive spirit; and going track-by-track, it's hard to find anything not worth hearing. But after awhile, the self-conscious out-there-ness of the record gets a little tiresome. The best parts of the record are, not coincidentally, the least "innovative" (read: gimmicky). Still, I'd rather have overly clever than safe. Dropping sodium into ammonia may not yield the spectacle a chemistry novice might expect (then again, it could - if only Mr. Nold were here), but at the very least, there's the excitement of trying out the unknown without knowing if you're taking all the right precautions or not. That's Gnarls Barkley; and, yeah, it's pretty wonderful.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"St. Elsewhere" by Gnarls Barkley
Downtown Records
Released 5/9/06
Produced by Danger Mouse
37 min.
SONGS: Go-Go Gadget Gospel - Crazy - St. Elsewhere - Gone Daddy Gone - Smiley Faces - The Boogie Monster - Feng Shui - Just a Thought - Transformer - Who Cares? - Online - Necromancer - Storm Coming - The Last Time
Gnarls Barkley is the highly anticipated collaboration from Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo. Danger Mouse is one of the most important artist/producers in mus...More at Buy.com
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