St. Elsewhere (CD)
Gnarls Barkley is the highly anticipated collaboration from Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo. Danger Mouse is one of the most important artist/producers in music today. "Demon Days" sold over 5 million worldwide and Dangerdoom's "The Mouse And The Mask" sold over 100,000 units. Accolades include GQ's "Men Of The Year" honor; Spin's "Eccentric Genius Of The Year", NME's "Hottest Hip-Hop Producer In The World", Entertainment Weekly's "Album Of The Year", Grammy nomination for Producer Of The Year, and more. Cee-Lo is a Grammy-nominated, founding member of Goodie Mob. He wrote and produced the Pussycat Dolls #1 smash hit "Don't Cha", and his two solo albums for Arista scanned over 500,000 units combined. He also wrote hit singles for Ludacris, Common, P Diddy, Trick Daddy, and others.
| Tracklisting | |
| Disk | 1 | |
| 1 | Go-Go Gadget Gospel |
| 2 | Crazy |
| 3 | St. Elsewhere |
| 4 | Gone Daddy Gone |
| 5 | Smiley Faces |
| 6 | The Boogie Monster |
| 7 | Feng Shui |
| 8 | Just A Thought |
| 9 | Transformer |
| 10 | Who Cares |
| 11 | On-Line |
| 12 | Necromancer |
| 13 | Storm Coming |
| 14 | The Last Time |
| Josh Kopin
- chicago, , USA |
| I could tell you about how the debut record from the hip-hop duo Gnarls Barkley feels like its creating a new Zeitgeist for hip-hop, or how it's a genre bending statement to the sometimes unlistenable state of modern rap, but I would be lying. Not because these things are true, but because I am not qualified to say them. I can't pretend to know the current hip-hop zeitgeist is, because honestly? I don't really care. At this very moment, most rap, at least most of the extremely popular stuff, is both beat and lyrically impotent. The latter is what bothers me most about most hip-hop. It spends so much time telling you about how the rapper snorted coke off of the flat stomach of some big boobed 'ho it almost becomes a parody of itself. It is so conscious of being badass that it isn't. And that's why St. Elsewhere feel so transcendent, so refreshing. Like I said, I don't have the credentials to comment on modern hip-hop, but what I can tell you is this: Gnarls Barkley sound like they're having fun. Not making noise about having fun, not rapping to you about how much they'll be having, but actually HAVING fun making music. This is the sound of two guys screwing around with what sounds good, not what sounds badass, not what sounds the most ghetto, but what they think sounds the BEST.
St. Elsewhere starts off with ''Go-Go Gadget Gospel'', a whir and a bang, with Cee-Lo getting up on his pulpit and preaching and beseeching the listening masses, the church of High Fidelity, (What you waiting on/I want action, passion, smiling/Laughing, yielding, feeling/Helping, healing/Introduce your neighbour to... your saviour/I'm free, look at me/Freedom in high-fidelity) to join both himself and beat master Danger Mouse on a journey that might just save your soul. The souls in St. Elsewhere often really do need saving. There are severely disturbed characters in both ''Just A Thought'' and ''Necromancer'' and the dark and (relatively) somber beats reflect this. The former is a deep and soulful emo kid's plea, an appeal, a cry for help, (It's even dark in the daytime/it's not just good, its great depression/when i was lost i even found myself/looking in the guns direction/and so i tried, everything but suicide/and yes its/crossed my mind/but I'm fine), and the latter a statement of quite literal insanity, the beats are schizophrenic and the first person narrative is from a necrophiliac psychopath.
Cee-Lo's preacher, perhaps the groups namesake, is a consistent theme through the album, a man, like the album, with joyous highs and emotional lows. I could probably say how this is allegory for real world religion, I could explain the preacher is no more than a metaphor for any number of real world situations. And you know why I won't? Because the music's so good, I just don't care. | |
| 11/10 | Asobi Seksu Rewolf |
| 11/10 | Bobby Birdman New Moods |
| 11/10 | Cave In EP |
| 11/10 | Dead Meadow David Peel Sessions |
| 11/10 | DJ/rupture Solar Life Raft |
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