{for all music related posts, see .Evolving.Music}In 2006, St. Elsewhere, an album of collaboration between producer Danger Mouse (The Grey Album, Ghetto Pop Life) and rapper Cee-Lo Green (...is the Soul Machine) dropped and instantaneously brought a variety of new mixmatched sounds to the hip-hop industry. The album covered Funk, Soul, R&B, Hip-Hop, Lounge and Electro in equal parts, never hesitating to throw them together and see what came out. This excellent album was an instant hit and spawned the ridiculously popular "Crazy" which began popping up anywhere you could find music. Following the success of the album, the DJ Sound Advice put his own re-mix spin on the tracks by releasing, for free download, Gnarls Biggie, an album comprised of mash-ups between Gnarls Barkley tracks and Notorious B.I.G. vocal tracks. Yesterday, weeks ahead of the scheduled April release date, St. Elsewhere officially became the freshman offering from Gnarls Barkley as they released their sophomore album, The Odd Couple.
Clocking in at 13 tracks and a brief 39 minutes, The Odd Couple finds Danger and Cee-Lo picking up right where their off-beat and stylistically vibrant and diverse St. Elsewhere left off. "Charity Case" opens the album with the funk baseline and oldies feel made popular by Andre 3000's "Hey Ya." The female backing vocals and bell chimes help keep Cee-Lo grounded in the track, and the moving rhythm and hand claps help the head keep nodding. Two days ago, when I watched the season finale of AMC's show Breaking Bad, I thought the song they ended the episode to was a fantastic one. It was haunting, mixing a Western and Soul feel with slow and emotionally infused lyrics reminiscent of Bill Withers vocals. Now imagine my surprise when I get to track two and that song turns out to be "Who's Gonna Save My Soul."
For the remainder of this review, see "The Odd Couple"
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