two cans = hurting
BODEGA™ contributor Amos Barshad goes in on the new Gnarls Barkley joint…
“Crazy” was a surprise, but it wasn’t an accident. Yeah, Gnarls Barkley looked like another notch in Danger Mouse’s Awesome-Collabo post—there was no reason to think the combination of Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse would catapult the two to a next level stratosphere of popularity that nothing on their respective track records had ever hinted at; yeah, it was surprising. But it wasn’t accidental—”Crazy” is a great hit song, odd, incessant, and still somehow replayable. And, perhaps most importantly for its mass appeal, devoid of much personality.
That’s the catch with Gnarls Barkley. Their debut, St. Elsewhere, came out on an independent label, Downtown Records, but that album, like The Odd Couple (released by Downtown, distributed by Atlantic) is corporate radio ready, trafficking in the same generic milieu as Hinder or Alicia Keys or anything else that sells a lot of records. And there’s nothing wrong—on the face of it—with Gnarls Barkley being a professionally executed, sterile act; it’s just that the guys in this particular professionally executed, sterile act have a long and worthy history of messy, thorny music…
read the rest here…
plus a snoop doggy dogg review on the same page.
also, have you been taking your pairs?