Gnarls Barkley: The Odd Couple (2008 Year In Review)
[Downtown Records/Warner]
By: Christian Hagen
Imagine yourself in a state of true depression. You’ve lost someone dear to you, and you just want to let out all of your emotions. But all anyone around you wants to do is dance. They can’t be bothered to think or feel. They just need to groove. So what do you do?
You make people dance to your sadness.
Nobody sings their sorrows quite like Cee-Lo Green. This isn’t a bold statement; nobody sings anything quite like Cee-Lo Green. It’s like saying that nobody paints with the color blue quite like Picasso. And yet, when the average person thinks of Cee-Lo, or his duo with Danger Mouse, Gnarls Barkley, they think of his danceable mega hits, like “Crazy”, “Gone Daddy Gone”, or “Smiley Faces”. Gnarls Barkley is the party band, the disco ball in the club, the perfect fun mood-setter. But this barely scratches the surface of these songs. Even the lyrics to “Crazy” are rather depressing (and when they performed the song at the Grammys, it was stirring and beautiful rather than fun). And so it is with “The Odd Couple”, the band’s often melancholy and even experimental sophomore album.
People seemed to expect a lot out of Gnarls Barkley going into this release. They had one of the most successful debut albums of the decade, and their star was rising quickly. Yet, listening to songs like the heart-wrenching “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?” and the rhythmic fury of “Open Book”, it sounds like the band was more interested in exorcising personal demons than repeating their chart success. The lyrics don’t recall the upbeat atmosphere of their previous work. “Oh, how could this be?/All this time, I’ve lived vicariously/Who’s gonna save my soul now?” Cee-Lo sings, and the hurt is splattered on the walls of his lyrical canvass like blood on his hands. The lament is almost tragic. That song is followed by the fast-paced “Going On”, but with the catchy chorus and quick beat, there is self-exploration, as Cee-Lo sings as much about letting go of this Earth as letting go of his troubles and getting down.
The album is a complex series of questions that answer themselves, despair bordering on suicide, and acceptance of the lives we lead and must eventually leave. No song summarizes these feelings better than the closer, “A Little Better”, a telling and uplifting song of emotional release. It may be the album’s most simple-sounding track, a bouncing bass line moving things along as Cee-Lo lifts his chin and smiles into the darkness of his past: “I want to thank you morning sun/I want to thank you loaded gun/Now I know I’m not the only one.”
It may not be perfect, but Gnarls Barkley’s “The Odd Couple” is one of the most profoundly personal discs to come out of the pop world in years. For Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse, the party continues on, but the haunting emotionality they leave in their wake will linger with me for years to come.
This post previously appeared as part of Pajiba’s 2008 Year In Review
