Album Review - Gnarls Barkley, Odd Couple

YYY 1/2 A Good Album

Sometimes NOT listening to radio is a saving grace. While the rest of the world was being force-fed Crazy from Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 album St. Elsewhere, by avoiding the airways I am lucky enough to say that I still love that song and album. The songs on that first album were full of energy and fun and even on a track that discusses a mental defect, I came out of listening to it feeling happy. On their new album, Odd Couple, Gnarls is pretty much more of the same except for one big thing: the lyrics are darker, much more introspective and soulful. On this record, the music and vocals combine the classic soul that you might hear on the Stax or Atlantic label into a new soul sound really showcasing the fusion of old R&B and new hipster R&B. The music on Odd Couple can best be described as nouvelle cuisine: A modern style of cooking that emphasizes the use of the finest and freshest ingredients simply and imaginatively prepared. Gnarls is made up producer/musician extraordinaire, Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), and vocalist Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Callaway). DM has a flair for fusing together sounds, he came to fame by mixing Jay-Z’s Black album and the Beatles White album into the illegal internet sensation Gray album, but it is with Gnarls that his talent shines. To me, modern R&B/soul "music" has become over-produced and formulaic, and not since the days Stax folding has any of the music on soul records had any...soul! What DM manages to do is make the music interesting again. The album kicks off with Charity Case, the combination of Danger Mouse’s uplifting music and Cee-Lo’s more subdued and soul searching lyrics. On many of these songs I feel sorry for Cee-Lo; the introspective Who’s Gonna Save My Soul really sets a sad tone that flows throughout the record. On Blind Mary (a tune about marrying a blind woman so she won’t be able to see how ugly he is), his self-deprecation, while sad, channels his heartbreak, and at the same time the music has you out of your seat. Are Gnarls Barkley the saviors of soul music? Probably not, but this dynamic duo knows how to make a very listenable record, and while I’m not really sure what heartbreak Cee-Lo has experienced, whatever it is was can best be summed up with a line from a line A Little Better “The circumstance put soul in me.” Indeed it did.