Editorial Review:Amazon.com:Following the worldwide, unparalleled critical acclaim for 2006's St. Elsewhere and their record breaking hit 'Crazy,' Gnarls Barkley is set to release their sophomore album this April. Titled,
The Odd Couple, the album features 13 tracks of new material from Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green. The first single, 'Run' has been met with rave reviews, and
The Odd Couple is without question one of the most anticipated releases of 2008.
Amazon.co.uk:With its cinematic origins
The Odd Couple is the natural title for the second album by a pair who seem to spend as much time in wardrobe as the studio and whose recordings are often compared to film scores. Their greatest hit, 2006's 'Crazy' was even built around a chunk of a spaghetti western soundtrack. Yet after the success of 2006's excellent
St Elsewhere, the collaboration of singer Thomas 'Cee-Lo Green' Callaway and producer Brian 'Danger Mouse' Burton has become a permanent institution.
The Odd Couple certainly lives up to expectations, and though there is no obvious smash to match 'Crazy', it's a smoother affair than their often hyperactive debut, the unsettling 'Open Book' aside. Highlights include the excellent, agitated lead-off single 'Run', a smart slice of off kilter pop-soul, and its most obvious successor, the instant classic 'Surprise'. 'Going On' manages to weld an eighties pomp-pop introduction to a surprisingly vulnerable Cee-Lo performance while the plaintive, bluesy 'Who's Gonna Save My Soul' catches him at his most soulful. 'Whatever' is a cute, rather bratty sixties pastiche halfway to Britpop (though no Englishman ever used the expression 'y'all') while the warped bubblegum pop of 'Blind Mary' and the more traditionally ominous 'Would Be Killer' are opposite sides of the same twisted coin. Informed by rap and dance, but occupying their own unique genre, Gnarls Barkley continue to soundtrack the movie that, so far, exists only in their heads.
--Steve Jelbert
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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* Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple ...
The Odd Couple (2008, Warner Bros.) Gnarls Barkley's second studio album. ***1/2
In 2006, Gnarls Barkley released St. Elsewhere, an album so fresh and so needed that everyone held their breath for a follow-up album, hoping that the collaboration between singer Cee-Lo and producer "Danger Mouse" Burton was not a one-off affair. Thankfully, 2008 delivered the goods. The Odd Couple is not as pleasing as St. Elsewhere, with one too many songs that don't quite live up to what is expected of these two. However, it is not without its share of masterpieces.
"Run," the obvious first single, is without a doubt the best song on either of their albums, with its vintage sounds of the 50's and 60's rock and soul. Cee-Lo belts like he never has before, again proving he is probably the most soulful singer of the twenty-first century. His voice, as powerful as Little Richard's and just as similar to the 80's singer Sylvester (Not the cartoon cat, the "Do You Wanna Funk?" guy) is integral to the feel of every song. In fact, that whole feel carries on throughout the album, showing up again in stars on the also-amazing track "Surprise," complete with "baapbaa" chorus from God knows where. And it's this difference, the production that makes it feel like Little Richard music in the digital age, that is the profound mark of change between St. Elsewhere and The Odd Couple. Beyond that, there isn't much that has changed. This, however, is not a problem in the slightest, as the sound is still so fresh that as long as the music is good, the style can go on forever. (Run, Surprise)
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* Dissappointed ...
I saw these guys on SNL and was blown away. I must have been pretty loaded at the time because the CD sure doesn't come across with the same energy.
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* kitschy sheds its petals ...
I liked Gnarls better back when he used to sell me copies of "Grit" magazine and cut my hoop nets when I was looking toward the fire he'd set in my wastebasket. Now, he's whooping it up like a sitcom diversion, jibberjabbing like a simian slutdive bellhop. I like mockingbirds in a guilty way when they don't know I'm awake, spying on their mating chatter. But this, this by nature is grandiose, cellular, predisposed, grating. And I'm having a major case of deja vu. Does it even matter anymore? We're an expendable society, so why not embrace polymers? Why not kill all the fish?
But I plodded on, wondering what this "soup of the day" really was. Were those bits of carrot or flesh wounds? And it didn't matter because we had techmologicalized. We were pushing buttons now and DNA-approved to gain access to pay-per-view oxygen. We evolved through hope and memory loss. By the time I reached "Whatever," I really didn't care, which provided perhaps the finest moment of this failed experiment -- a time-transcendent conversation with Gnarls truly, wrapped in tusks of irony. But I still didn't know the way out of this cardboard box jungle -- the bird, strangled by glory-trolling, decaying in uncaptured sunshine.
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* You Gotta Be Kidding me ...
Is this stuff music? Sounds like a bunch of drug heads going on a road trip. Please, give me a break. This stuff is not music. A child can make noise but you expect more from adults calling themselves artist or musicians.
I purchased this junk based on a recommendation from Sound & Vision Magazine. What a mistake. As I listened, I started doing paperwork because it was so horrible sounding and boring. Then this mess became like torture. Couldn't finish listening to this trash.
This should be listed under miscellaneous instead of music. How it can be considered music, I have no idea.
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* Best CD of 2008 so far ...
This is a wonderful album, one of the best I've heard so far this year. Someone mentioned it's like psychedelic soul. Give it a try. And if you happen to catch Gnarls Barkley playing on SNL in reruns, you'll be blown away.
