St. Elsewhere — Gnarls Barkley
Downtown
2006
Rating:


"St. Elsewhere" is a title loaded in meaning that accurately describes all the triumphs and failings of Gnarls Barkley's debut album.

Less obviously, the title is a reference to a lyric from the A Tribe Called Quest single "Award Tour" from the "Midnight Marauders" album. On the track Phife raps, "next time that you think you want something here / Make something differ, take that garbage to St. Elsewhere."

In many ways this is Gnarls Barkley's thesis statement. A rebuke against conventional hip-hop, R&B and pop, "St. Elsewhere" is a bold album that defies easy categorization in an attempt to send away conformist music. Nothing less would be expected from two of music's most eccentric stars, Goodie Mob and "Soul Machine" solo artist Cee-Lo and producer Danger Mouse, the man behind the Jay-Z-The Beatles mash-up "The Grey Album" and who jumps genres to command the boards for artists as varied as Gorillaz, Danger Doom, The Rapture and Sparklehorse.

Gnarls meets those expectations on the epochal single "Crazy." The "Hey Ya" of 2006, the ubiquitous song earns its phenomenon status by likewise being a genre-blending work of pop that seamlessly melds the new with the old. A clipped snare and bassline provide the memorable opening to Cee-Lo's ruminations on sanity. Danger Mouse's rhapsodic production builds and builds with choirs, Isaac Hayes strings and a sudden gust of wind in the right speaker, sweeping the listener off to a place far, far away.

"Just a Thought" is arguably even greater, a track of violent, UNKLE-like drumming, Spanish guitar and suicidal tendencies. "I've tried everything but suicide," Cee-Lo sings, "but it's crossed my mind." Cee-Lo ponders what to do about "great depression" and pent-up aggression just as Danger Mouse provides a potential cure in his madcap beats. "Go Go Gadget Gospel" features some of the most propulsive, chaotic rhythms and instrumentation since OutKast's "Ghetto Musik" so that when Cee-Lo sings "I'm free! / Freedom in high fidelity!" you can tell he means it. The dark and nasty "Necromancing" is a sinister soul song about killing a lover. Cee-Lo aptly describes it: "The production is progressive / But the reason is retro / The chords are cold-blooded murder / I named it neo-necro." "Storm Coming" is an album summation, a song where Danger Mouse's Aphex Twin-stuttering beats give Cee-Lo a reason to sing at his most soulfully urgent and "do a dance that'll make the sky cry blood."

But "St. Elsewhere" also references a heralded television show that undermined itself when it turned out the entire show took place within someone's head. Gnarls, in its perhaps foolhardy attempt to build a musical tower of Babel, falls hard when it fails, resulting in incoherence. The album as a whole suffers from an emotional disconnect and a general insularity that makes "St. Elsewhere" more of an intellectual effort than one that's genuinely affecting. Gnarls' inability to get outside its head is most pronounced on the "Chinese Gardens" revamp of the Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone," the inability to properly turn a vocal sample on "Who Cares" into the soul funk of Hayes or Bootsy Collins and the misbegotten "Monster Mash" of "The Boogie Monster."

Yet Gnarls Barkley has largely succeeded in creating a shining example of what can be done in music if boundaries and genre limitations are ignored and transcended. In short, they've succeeded in making something different.

Posted Monday, December 18, 2006

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/music/gnarls.barkley/st.elsewhere