Scooter McGavin's 9th Green: Gnarls Barkley

Showing posts with label Gnarls Barkley. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I Guess He’s an X-Box and I’m More Atari

I always viewed Cee Lo Green as a novelty. He was the weird troll looking dude in the eccentric rap group Goodie Mob, who managed to make OutKast seem normal in comparison. He went on to make weird RnB music on his solo work. And lest us not forget his cameo of daddy dearest on an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen (um, not that I watched the show, I just heard he was on it). I never took notice of him as a credible artist until he hooked up with Danger Mouse for two ambitiously great albums under the moniker Gnarls Barkley. Even after that success, when I heard he was recording a new solo album, I thought, yawn, wake me up when he’s back to recording with Danger Mouse.

Then I caught wind of the name of his first single off The Lady Killer, the unapologeticly titled (Expletive Deleted) You. Despite the title, the song turned out to be no novelty song which was debuted with a viral video the featured the song lyrics scrolled across a fluorescently colored background. Not only was the song no novelty, it was the most infectious song released since his own Crazy, and also featured the greatest sing-a-long chorus that you wouldn’t dare sing in front of your mother since Closer wanted to (expletive deleted) you like an animal.

Much like his work with Gnarls Barkley, it is hard to classify The Lady Killer; is it Retro-Soul? Psychedelic RnB? Experimental Pop? Whatever you try to label it, it is highly entertaining. The biggest risk on the album may be his cover of the psychedelic pop rock of Band of Horses where Green turns up the beat on No One’s Gonna Love You and turns it into a solid gold gem.

Other stand out tracks included the disco themed Bright Lights, Bigger City which I will blindly believe was inspired by the awesome Michael J. Fox movie of the similar name. Love Gun may be the best James Bond theme song never written (the bookends to the album has Cee-Lo throwing his hat in the ring to be Agent 008). Satisfied is a Stax horn infused that will leave you like the title suggests thanks to a sixties girl group style chorus. Then Old Fashioned is just that and could have fit in nicely when Teddy Pendergrass and Curtis Mayfield were belting out RnB classics. With that all said, how about another Gnarls Barkley album by next year?

Song to Download – (Expletive Deleted) You

The Lady Killer gets a Terror Alert Level: High [ORANGE]

on my Terror Alert Scale.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Breaking Down the 100 Greatest Albums of the 00’s

Some say we will look back at the 00’s as the decade when the full length album died, and for the most part they will be right. Sure albums will never go away as long as there are people stupid enough to plop down ten dollars for an album with only a good song or two. But the album as an event has long passed. In this instant gratification day and age, we just want to get to the three minutes of musical joy instead of having to spend a whole album digesting an album. I cannot remember one album I sat around with a bunch of friends last decade dissecting it with friends like I did back in the ninties (granted this may be an age thing).

So my list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 00’s is less about a cohesive album (which there were very few of in the 00’s) than just a collection of twelve good to great songs. I’m sure there can be griping of albums I left out, but when compiling a list of albums for consideration, I only included albums I actual spent money on (or had someone else buy for me, with the obvious exception of two albums on the list), and when it comes down to it, if I didn’t even bother to drop ten dollars (or even less at discount prices), it is not something worthy of my list anyway. Here is how my list broke down by the numbers.

Artists with Multiple Albums
Dave Matthews (Band) – 5
Jack Johnson – 4
John Mayer (Trio) – 4
Ryan Adams (and the Cardinals) - 4
Alicia Keys – 3
Coldplay – 3
Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley) – 3
Kanye West – 3
Michelle Branch (The Wreckers) – 3
The Roots – 3
U2 - 3

Albums by Year
2000 – 6
2001 – 12
2002 – 11
2003 – 8
2004 – 9
2005 – 12
2006 – 8
2007 – 10
2008 – 14
2009 – 10

Albums by Genre
Rock - 19
Rap - 15
Alternative – 14
Pop - 13
Adult Contemporary – 11
RnB - 9
Folk - 8
Country - 5
Blues - 3
Hard Rock - 3

Monday, August 09, 2010

I Want My Music Television vol. LXXXIX

There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.

Power - Kanye West

Do not call this a music video, it ia living portrait. Alrighty, I am not sure that it awesome, or just the most pretentious move ever. Probably both. Hopefully Kanye West doesn’t use the same delivery style throughout his next album because it reminds me of the voice Eminem used during Relapse which was so annoying, Em disavowed it. It is alright for a song or two, but I have no desire to hear and hour’s worth of it.

Love the Way You Lie - Eminem & Rihanna

Speaking of Eminem, he has a new video of his own and you know it is serious because it has big name actors in it. Granted it is hard to take anything serious when Megan Fox is involved because she cannot act, and really can only come close to pulling something off when she is portraying a hooker or succubus.

What Part of Forever – Cee Lo

When his former partner is going the pretentious route by casting the chick from Mad Men in a sci-fi video, Cee Lo is stuck slumming it with vampires on the Twilight soundtrack. Maybe he should have stuck with Gnarls Barkley.

Cold War - Janelle Monae

You may remember Janelle Monae as the house band for this year’s ESPY Awards and here is a super simple video to her latest song reminiscent of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2U performance.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Dawn to End All Nights: That’s All We Hoped it Was

Brian Burton was the most entertaining person of the 00’s whose name no one would recognize. A few more people would now his stage name Danger Mouse. Yet everyone is familiar with his most famous work as one half of Gnarls Barkley who created the greatest experimental pop song since When Doves Cry.

It was an odd decade for Brian Burton. He started off by perfecting the mash-up with The Grey Album which took acappella from Jay-Z’s The Black Album and backed them with instrumentations taken from The Beatles The White Album. That actually led to producing jobs for acts ranging from Gorillaz to Beck to The Black Keys. But his most successful collaboration came with Cee-Lo Green.

Even though everything he has done has been ear candy, you still had to scratch your head when Burton’s latest collaboration was with James Mercer of The Shins (who are best known for not changing your life as Natalie Portman promised). Even though Mercer and Green have little in common other than working with Burton, Broken Bells is similar to Gnarls Barkley that just trades Green’s Deep South soul with Mercer’s acoustic guitar.

Both groups’ first singles were these big huge pop sounding songs with an undercurrent of moody and somber tones. While the rest of the respective album tried to reach the cultural high point to little avail. But unlike Gnarls Barkley where Danger Mouse provided the music for Cee Lo to sing his songs over, Broken Bells is a more collaborative effort with the duo putting their two cents each on the music and lyrics which reigns in Burton who went a little too out there with his beats with Gnarls Barkley. Here on Broken Bells, his eclectiveness only comes in small bursts like the opening moments like the opening bars of The High Road.

Though The High Road is the high point of the debut, there are some other gems to be found Vaporize starts out what could be a Shins song with just guitar before a half a minute in before Burton adds some fuzzy keyboards onto the track. While Your Head Is on Fire is a weird trippy Beach Boys type song heard through Danger Mouse’s usual psychedelic filter. Though Gnarls Barkley never reached the heighted of Crazy on the sophomore effort, The Odd Couple was a stronger album as a whole. Here’s hoping the next Broken Bells record follows the format.

Song to Download – The High Road

Broken Bells gets a Terror Alert Level: High [ORANGE]

on my Terror Alert Scale.

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