Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple

Was everyone crazy?

Wisely letting the Crazy dust settle first, Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse foreground St Elsewhere’s undercurrent of self-assessment and psychotic tension for an album that will never repeat its predecessor’s success – although that’s a good thing. The Odd Couple shows us why we should appreciate them. It doesn’t create new music, but then neither did St Elsewhere. What it does, however, is force a little bit of dark imagination into pop’s mainstream. Also a good thing.

Opener Charity Case rides a bassline folded from Radiohead’s Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box, and the comparison isn’t too wild. This might be dressed up as a modern R&B record, but there’s far too much paranoia and Dreaming-era Kate Bush sound-shifting to make it anything other than another one of those thoroughly modern records doing thoroughly modern things like questioning where one fits in today’s world. In all, it’s a consolidation of ideas; no crime, but no great leap either. Unless they reinvent sound next time, The New Odd Couple is probably a best avoided follow-up; but Cee-Lo’s one of the most interesting hip-hop/R&B stars of the last 13 years, while Danger Mouse is a by-word for modern production – it’s this or Duffy.

Warner Bros | tbc

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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