"Crazy" for Gnarls Barkley and "Saint Elsewhere"

There's a lot being written and said about Gnarls Barkley, and none of it's bad. The super-combo of Cee-Lo Green and hip-hop producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton, has risen to the top of the UK Music charts powered solely by download sales.

"Crazy," arguably the single of the moment is a seductive, sexual, funny, and infinitely repeatable. In the words of Alexis Petridis in the Guardian,

"It echoes all kinds of apparently contradictory music - the exquisite misery of a southern soul ballad, the tempo and spacey euphoria of an old vocal house anthem, the clanking, unfunky bassline of a 1980s indie band - but the cumulative effect sounds like nothing else."

She makes a strong case. I only just downloaded the album Friday morning, and am away from my computer for a much-needed Easter weekend with the family, but I can't think about anything else. I though Wolfmother was the new heat, and in the rock world they are. But this stuff is gospel-silky and electro-indie and so, so cool. Gnarls Barkley fits perfectly into the new canon of poppy hipster rap, right along with DangerDoom, Outkast and Doctor Octagon. It may be a stretch, but "Crazy" could elbow its way onto wedding dancefloors and bar mitzvahs until the end of time, right along with "brick House" and Outkast's recent addition, "Hey Ya."

If nothing else, Gnarls Barkley is the new gold standard for pimping out a Myspace profile. How do you even do that to a Myspace page? And why has nobody else bothered?

The entire album is available in stores on April 24th, and it's all but guaranteed to be the first huge album of the summer. But since you people put up with my verbose vomiting of musical memories, I'll give you a free download of Gnarls Barkley's album "Saint Elsewhere," available until Friday, April 23rd. All I ask is that you show me some love, tell your friends, and keep commenting.

Gnarls Barkley: "Saint Elsewhere."

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 1:15 PM