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Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere

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"Crazy" from Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere"

It’s already begun. Chances are you’ve heard Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and it will not stop shaking around in your head. Complete with thumping bass line and the soul-stirring vocal from Cee-Lo Green, the song that could be the single of the year is all over radio, topping charts worldwide. It is one of the most downloaded songs online. “Crazy” is just the first of many more like it on Gnarls Barkley’s infectious debut St. Elsewhere. Gnarls Barkley is the collaborative effort of former Goodie Mob MC Green (a.k.a. Thomas Calloway) and producer DJ Danger Mouse (a.k.a. Brian Burton), whose credits include the outlawed Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up The Grey Album and recent records with Gorillaz and as half of DangerDoom. Mouse provides the richly detailed musical backdrop while Green drops his distinctive and ubiquitous melding of rap, soul and funk. The resulting record is a bona fide success as a genre-defiant collection of songs that could turn the tide of “pop music’s” connotation as curse words. “Smiley Faces” sounds like a great lost psychedelic Motown 45 recorded in space. “Who Cares?” dips into organ-laden, laid-back 1970s funk territory. Gnarls’ cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone” is about as perfect as a cover could be as it manages to thoroughly revamp an already great song without stripping away the meat and bones of it. Danger Mouse maneuvers a slinky electro beat to Green’s deadpanning vocal, which arguably bests Gordon Gano’s. While there isn’t a dull moment on St. Elsewhere, it isn’t a perfect record either. Some material here is filler, like the silly “Boogie Monster” and the CoD-Dirty South hiphop of “Transformer,” but such is only when compared to the many high points of the record. All in all, there is enough here to mark it one of the brightest musical spots of 2006. St. Elsewhere is the first must-have album to pump on the car stereo this summer.