Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 24/04/06
Label: Warner Bros

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.

Latest on the list is Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy". A big-lunged, warm-hearted wave of gospel-toned R&B anchored by a snappy, hip hop beat, it's the first tune ever to make Number One on downloads alone and looks set to make the album from which it was lifted the soundtrack to our summer. Gnarls Barkley's rule-breaking entrance is less of a surprise when you consider that one half of the duo is DJ / producer Danger Mouse, who recently produced Gorillaz' "Demon Days" but who's best known for his corporation-bothering "Grey Album", which cheekily cut The Beatles' "White Album" with Jay Z's "Black Album". His partner is Cee-Lo Green, former vocalist with Atlantan hip hop crew The Goodie Mob, who's worked with both The Neptunes and Timbaland.

With "St. Elsewhere", however, both artists have stepped outside their regular roles to make what feels like a genuinely instinctive, love-fuelled record that zings with an enthusiasm for all spectrums of music. So rampantly creative is it, in fact, that to describe it as a hip hop album is to somehow sell it short. Only the beats - and the old-school homage that is "Feng Shui" - fit that description. Gnarls Barkley's tunes follow paths from Motown (the sweetly upbeat "Smiley Faces") to schlocky, horror-movie soundtrack ("The Boogie Monster"), from a modernist take on classic soul (the wonderful "Who Cares?") to the kind of polyrhythmic adventurism that would satisfy Four Tet or Capitol K ("Go-Go Gadget Gospel" and "Transformer"). All that and a cover of The Violent Femmes' "Gone "Daddy Gone".

It's the album's easy warmth and trippy, picture-window openness that make it so alluring, however. This despite Cee-Lo's unbearably soulful baritone and his often sombre lyrics. "Just A Thought", for instance, has him musing, "So what do I do with all the aggression? / I've tried everything but suicide / But it's crossed my mind." "Crazy", meanwhile, is the most existentially honest song to have dented the charts in decades, dealing as it does with identity, madness and spiritual abandonment. Albums such as "Paul's Boutique", "The Low End Theory", "Fantastic Vol. 1" and "Endtroducing…" have all played their part in shifting the shape of hip hop, but the 37-minutes-long "St. Elsewhere" demands a category all of its own.

Danger Mouse himself has suggested "psychedelic soul". Done and dusted. And damn near divine.

    by Sharon O'Connell