GNARLS BARKLEY - St Elsewhere Review

How do you categorize an album that blends hefty soul shouting, swirly techno, and creepy-crawly hip-hop? Not easy, but that's the pleasure of this captivating collaboration between Brian Burton (a.k.a. Danger Mouse, the nerd-rap brains behind the last Gorillaz disc and The Grey Album) and Goodie Mob belter Cee-Lo. Neither man has made a conventional record in his life, and on St. Elsewhere they're not about to start. ''Crazy,'' the record's seamless fast-rising single, is Seal with meat on his bones....full text DJ Danger Mouse is officially a musical Midas. Having previously knocked it out of the park with The Grey Album, Gorillaz's Demon Days, and the loopy, inspired MF Doom collaboration The Mouse And The Mask, he's teamed up with the Goodie Mob's Cee-Lo Green and fashioned St. Elsewhere, the funkiest pop record of '06 so far....full text Rather like humpbacked whales, they surface rarely but, when they do, they display such exquisite poise, awesome power and unstudied self-sufficiency that you'd swear some swish finishing school was rationing pop releases to maximum their impact. They are those mammoth US chart singles - most recently "Family Affair", "Crazy In Love", "Hey Ya", "The Way You Move" - whose pearlised perfection really has nothing to do with fashion or the contrivance of market forces....full text