Cee Lo's solo albums worked so much better on paper than they did vaulting from speaker cones. All the right ingredients seemed to be in place: He embraced his inner soul-singer and had the artistic freedom to stretch his legs outside of his Goodie Mob, a group that somehow never transcended the popularity of "Soul Food" despite the success of their many imitators.
But as Lo laments on St. Elsewhere's "Who Cares," "I have a hard time takin' the easy way," an understatement if there ever was one. Truth is, the guy is so far ahead of the game he's almost behind; if you defended Andre 3000's The Love Below to your friends, you still found yourself unwilling to stand behind the hoarse-whisperer soul extravaganza Cee Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections and its follow-up. It was too much, too soon.
To summarize, Cee never dropped his needle into a true-blue groove. Until now.
Not that Lo's collaboration with D... D... Danger Mouse doesn't have its share of cloying quirks. St. Elsewhere's harrowing pretzel twists and sharp, darting turns culminate in plenty of deadwood. What keeps Gnarls Barkley from succumbing to flawed side-project fluff is their hot flashes of genius, whisks of wonderment that couldn't have been yielded within the rigid confines of a full-time gig. GB are risky, frisky, and full of beans. They bounce to hip-hop and sway to soul, and their unpredictable nature may just cause a shift in the template of their genre.
It's difficult to imagine dill pickles like "Gone Daddy Gone," "Storm Coming," and "Who Cares" revolutionizing contemporary hip-hop; it's even more difficult to fathom the rap mogul that didn't soil his/her bling when "Crazy" first made its rounds on peer-to-peer sites and the odd radio station.
But "Crazy" isn't even the pinnacle of St. Elsewhere; that honor is bestowed upon "Just a Thought," a pure example of two disparate musicians complimenting each other perfectly. Laying sparse acoustic guitar over a messy bulge-beat circa The Grey Album's "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," Danger Mouse lays the groundwork for Cee Lo's best soul thread to date, his earnest delivery adding an emotional heft many hip-hop heads might not be ready for. He's not exactly shaking his spear at Shakespeare (in the words of Bobby Digi), but when juxtaposed by the cavalier verbal cow-tipping of his genre peers, Lo seems downright poetic.
And to be sure, though this is Lo's show to run, the weight of Gnarls' successes and failures rests squarely on the pixilated shoulders of Danger Mouse. When Mouse comes through with a flattering arrangement, Cee Lo's prose spring to life, prancing, dancing, and spinning like the animated plane wheels from a particularly rousing episode of Amazing Stories [remember that shit bitch?]. The funtime-y, all-that-and-a-stack-of-flapjacks feel of "Smiley Faces," complete with mid-song dolphin calls and opulent organ lines, can be directly attributed Mouse's production savvy. The scintillating samplery of "Necromancing," which finds synth lines and other digital diversions mingling and separating like the chew-path of a pack of hungry termites, also sees D. Mouse dancing lead.
Unfortunately, we must take the good with the bad. Mouse's pedestrian arrangements often trap Lo under a mediocre muddle of ramshackle rhythms and contrived sound clippings. Lo's wriggling and struggling underneath the weight of these yawnworthy moments is evident, as is his helplessness in righting the Goodshippe Gnarls when it slips off course. Thusly, "Boogie Monster" is the soul-hop equivalent of an uncreased pair of khakis; "Who Cares" cribs lame vocal samples and awful keyboard comping before failing its crash test; and "The Last Time" and "Gone Daddy Gone" prove there were too many 'yes' men in the studio.
All in all, the brunt of Gnarls Barkley's creative brawn is too pristine to pass by when taken in as a whole. Like so many albums released thus far in 2006, St. Elsewhere's triumphs are besmirched somewhat by its flubs. The difference between Elsewhere and the others is it tweaks nerves we didn't know existed, embracing melodies that challenge the notion hip-hoppers rap because they cain't sang none. Cee Lo sweats a certain brand of talent, the kind that first shone through on Goodie Mob tracks like "Still Standing" and "Decisions, Decisions," and it's a glorious feeling to hear his nasal squiggles find proper purchase.
1. Go-Go Gadeget 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. Necromancing
13. Storm Coming
14. The Last Time
More about: Gnarls Barkley
