Life > April 24, 2008

By Walker Kalan | Staff writer

The first few hundred times I listened to “Crazy” were magical. Then, I got in my mom’s car one day and heard that familiar baseline. “I remember when! I remember-I-remember-when…” I remember when this song used to be good. “Have you heard these guys?! Aren’t they great, Walk?!” Yea, Mom. Have I ever told you how cool you are?

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There was no escaping it. The song I once so dearly loved was enduring the slow and painful death of overexposure.

It seemed as though “Crazy” was destined to suffer the same fate as Will Ferrell, “Brown Eyed Girl” and every song from Top Gun — once great fun, ruined by redundancy and excessive quoting.

As it clung for dear life, battered and begging for mercy, a protector emerged from above, shadowing the poor song from lethal exposure. It was an umbrella ella, ella, eh, eh, eh. “Crazy” would live another day, thanks to Rihanna.

Despite its painfully unoriginal title — The Odd Couple — Gnarls Barkley’s second album is anything but. The music is teaming with flavor, a spicy jambalaya unfit for the timid palette. The hip-hop soprano Cee-Lo and his wingman, the dj/producer Danger Mouse, have crafted a genre-bending work; a sometimes overbearing, always entertaining fusion of rap, rock, soul, oldies and electronica.

The clear radio song of the bunch is “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster),” an infectious, high-strung tune backed by fluttering cymbals.

Whereas “Crazy” builds a sharp peak, dips, then peaks several more times, “Run” applies steady, almost unnerving pressure throughout. Although a decent song, it lacks “Crazy” appeal because a) Cee-Lo belts way too fast for the average sing-alonger b) the backtrack is grating after a while and c) the lyrics aren’t quite fit for virginal ears (Can’t you feel the pain/When the needle hits the vein/Ain’t nothing like the real thing).

Cee-Lo exhibits patience and a range in style far beyond what we heard in the band’s first album. “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” is a funkier adaptation of “Whats Goin On,” and a spot-on Marvin Gaye (with a touch of “Crazy” falsetto). In “Whatever,” Cee-Lo curls his lip and whines like an early ‘60s Brit-pop front-man. Gnarls reveals shades of the Kinks — flat metal guitar strokes, droning snares, background “wooOOss” and “la la la la’s” and deliberately sung, angst-filled lyrics (I don’t have any friends at all/Cause I have nothin in common with y’all/So who’s gonna catch me if I fall?)

Danger Mouse came on the scene a few years ago when he mixed The White Album with Jay Z’s The Black Album, calling it The Grey Album. For any readers who haven’t heard this mix, yes, it’s as sweet as its sounds.

However, some of the beats used in the Grey Album are pedestrian compared to the stuff DM has put together as part of Gnarls Barkley.

In The Odd Couple he combines traditional drum and bass with rapid, unorthodox synth noises. DM’s beats occasionally border on schizophrenic, putting some strain on the ears, although most of his tracks achieve a gripping audio aesthetic that melds well with Cee-Lo’s loopy vocals.

Both members of Gnarls Barkley are incredibly gifted, but they occasionally do their listeners a disservice by overcomplicating the music.

The Odd Couple is most successful when the vocals and mixing are toned down. This isn’t to say that the music is bad when Cee-Lo sings vibrato or Danger Mouse drops a manic baseline; the duo simply works best with one member under the spotlight and the other behind the scenes.

In “Neighbors,” a weeping R&B piece, Danger Mouse sets up a simple backtrack and lets the other half of the band take over. The results are profound. On my second listen, Cee-Lo’s delivery felt strangely familiar. I scanned my mental iPod and came to the stunning conclusion that he sounds uncannily like the singer from the Cranberries in “Zombie” when she cries “in your hea-ead, in your hea-ia-ead!”

As preposterous as it may be to compare a fat black man from Atlanta to a small white woman from Ireland, a few back-to-back replays confirmed my observation. Cee-Lo croons “my neeigh-bors, ma-y neee-igh-bors!” These guys are re-defining eclectic.

The Odd Couple is a stellar sophomore effort, but Gnarls Barkley still has some fine-tuning to do before it reaches Outkast status. Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse are unmatched in the hip-hop world in terms of creativity, but they appear to be one or two albums away from truly substantial material. It seems as though they occasionally suffer from musical ADD, packing songs with heaps of energy and innovative sound, but lacking the focus to tie it all together. In time, Gnarls Barkley will evolve into one of the great hip hop acts.

To their credit, the duo has leaped the first crucial hurdle on the path to mega-stardom: my mom knows who they are.