It seems like DJ Danger Mouse is all over the place these days. Ever since his breakthrough mash-up of Jay-Z’s Black Album and The Beatles’ White Album, he’s grown in recognition and last year he collaborated with MF Doom for Danger Doom, which was widely hailed as innovative and influential. Well, now he’s teaming up with another rapper from outside the mainstream, Cee-Lo, for what is a more innovative and what will most likely be a more influential album, St. Elsewhere.
Together, DJ Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo make up Gnarls Barkley and their first collaborative album is undeniably soulful.
Starting with the sound of a film projector kicking into gear, the album presents itself as a show. The first song, entitled “Go-Go Gadget Gospel” , is a frantic dash away from the gate. This is where their main inspiration becomes apparent and that inspiration is not 80’s cartoons or gospel – it’s Outkast.
It is not just the opening song, but the entire album feels like an Outkast album – it’s frenetic, weird and deceptively simple despite its complex arrangements. It just makes most other hip-hop (or soul-hop, for lack of a better term) artists from today seem outdated and passé. (The extent of Outkast’s influence here is so great that “The Boogie Monster” shares a sound and feel almost identical to “Dracula’s Wedding” from The Love Below.)
The mania of “Go-Go Gadget Gospel” is eclipsed with the deeply soulful second cut, “Crazy”, which has strings, gospel choir back-up vocals and Cee-Lo doing his best to croon – it works and it’s a fantastic song.
“Smiley Faces”, along with “Transformer”, are about as close Gnarls Barkley comes to directly copying The Love Below. That doesn’t detract from its (or their) excellence though. Both songs are destined to get people on the dancefloor and exhaust said people quickly.
The songs are quick but each one has its own merit, for the most part. The songs rarely pass the three-minute mark and I think the album survives on that. Too many hip-hop albums now have five-minute or longer average running times and when there’s little build-up or change between verses, the songs can run themselves out very quickly. By keeping the songs short, Gnarls Barkley thankfully manages to avoid this trap.
Picking up where Andre 3000 (of Outkast) left off with The Love Below, Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere wears its inspirations on its sleeve but it doesn’t hurt the power of the album. With only one not-so-great song (an unnecessary, almost note-for-note, cover of The Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone”), the album is nearly flawless. The single biggest flaw is indeed the album’s length – it’s too short and ends too soon! With songs so gloriously entertaining and fun, one would hope for more just because they seemed to have found their groove and it’s that that should be prolonged.
There are a few things enable this album to surpass The Love Below; the first is the lyrics. Cee-Lo has composed lyrics that don’t contain any of the misogynism or unnecessary sexual stories found on a lot of Outkast’s songs. In fact, the album hits a particular dark yet beautiful note when Cee-Lo sings on “Just a Thought”: “When I was lost I even found myself/Looking in the gun’s direction/And so I tried/Everything but suicide.” But he’s fine, the song notes. It’s a weirdly percussion-laden song, but it is also dramatic and poignant – a word not commonly applied to any form of hip-hop.
The second thing that makes St. Elsewhere a step above The Love Below is the absence of skits – “Where Are My Panties?” may have been amusing once or twice, but skits like that one get old very quickly. Again, thankfully, Gnarls Barkley have wisely left the unnecessary out and kept only the meat of any album – the songs.
If this is the beginning to a new movement towards soul-hop, a mixture of soul, hip-hop and electronic/breakbeat, then we should be thankful. Modern, mainstream hip-hop is about to receive a much needed kick in the ass which will bring it back to a contradictorily more organic, yet more produced sound.
Things have been getting brighter on the musical horizon for a few years now, with Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit knock-offs finally getting shown the door and melody finally being let back in. Gnarls Barkley puts on a good show and they deserve to be recognized.
GRADE: A