With the help of Danger Mouse's platinum ear and intricate vocal productions, Green is revealed as a top-notch post-millennial soul singer. The focus on instability doesn't end there - paranoia, suicidal tendencies, and multiple personalities are all in the cards, and there's also "Necromancer": "She was cool when I met her, but I think I like her better dead." Then, just to make sure listeners understand this is a concept album and not a message from a mind playing tricks on itself, they drop "The Boogie Monster" (although even the lyrics here can give pause: "I used to wonder why he looked familiar, and then I realized it was a mirror"). Over detached backings, Green croons, growls, scats, and generally delivers fine neo-soul vocals while Danger Mouse blankets the tracks with choruses of disembodied harmonies and a well-placed string section or crackling organ to conjure an appropriately minor chord atmosphere. The hit "Crazy" and the title track are perfect examples. The reasons for greatness here include DM's uncommon facility for writing (or sampling) simple hooks that stick, his creation of productions that entertain but don't detract from the main action, and his ability to coax a parade of enticing vocal performances from Green. Elsewhere is as good as Danger Mouse's two earlier landmarks ( Gorillaz's Demon Days and Danger Doom's The Mouse and the Mask), but not because of any inherent similarities in the three records. And if the vocal performances are twisted with the type of unbalanced wisdom not seen in pop music since Sly Stone (or at least OutKast), credit Cee-Lo Green, the former Goodie Mob seer/sage/freak. Elsewhere sounds like one of the best rap-based pop productions since the second Gorillaz album, then look no further than the common link, producer Danger Mouse. Cee-Lo's devilish and charismatic vocals go along with Danger Mouse's slightly off-kilter funk in such a way as to suggest that the world is all just a big cartoon anyway.Who is Gnarls Barkley, and how did he ascend to the top of the British charts with a song that brings an eerie clarity to the cloud of mental illness? (Hint: It wasn't just the fact that Britain began factoring download data into its chart equations.) If St. Elsewhere for too long makes me want to just - do something BAD. That's probably a good thing, since tunes such as "Go-Go Gadget Gospel" and "Transformer" are so filled with frenetic samples and repeated vocals that a little of them goes a long way. Elsewhere, but everything about Gnarls Barkley seems contrived as a show, from the duo's disguise-like costumes to the way the songs seem to burst in and out, sometimes in less than three minutes. "It's even dark in the daytime," Cee-Lo sings on "Just a Thought." "It's not just good, it's great depression/When I was lost I even found myself looking in the gun's direction." Bummer. It would be a great album to wallow in if it weren't such quick-hit fun. Gnarls Barkley gleefully, soulfully serves up meditations on suicide, necrophilia, loneliness and (sure, why not!) overzealous feng shui. The music is so infectious - tambourines, chugging beats - that sometimes the lyrics come as a surprise. With its eerie organ accompaniments and low, lamenting choruses, it sometimes feels like an episode of Scooby Doo crossed with a Motown reunion. Elsewhere looks a lot like it feels, and the mentally-unstable theme pervades more than the hit single. He can go from sounding like he's moaning an old spiritual to sounding like he's a newfangled preacher. Is the Soul Machine on the radio, but it wasn't that song that made me add his solo album to my wish list - it was "Crazy." Green is relentlessly on point - screeching, crooning and harmonizing over himself in a way that recalls Terence Trent D'Arby, and even sometimes Erykah Badu. I remember hearing the Timbaland-produced song "I'll Be Around," from 2004's Cee-Lo Green. Elsewhere is to wonder why he ever bothered to do anything else. Cee-Lo was a member of the Atlanta hip-hop group Goodie Mob. The latter is known for The Grey Album, his mash-up of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. Gnarls Barkley is not a person, but rather a collaboration, between rapper/vocalist Cee-Lo Green and DJ Danger Mouse. You couldn't ask for a better single than "Crazy." Its stuttering, opening line grabs you right away - "I remember when - I remember, I remember when I lost my mind/There was something so pleasant about that place." - and you're hooked into the momentum of a song punctuated by ghostly oooooh background vocals and the funk-soul wail of the chorus. Now Gnarls Barkley has taken it to the top of the British charts and it's starting to make an impression here. There's Patsy Cline's woozy, weepy ballad Seal's cool '90s hit Aerosmith's. Maybe pop music success just boils down to naming your song "Crazy." The title's history is a good one.
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