Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple

It doesn’t make sense that an album that many folks will crank up at their next party is etched in loneliness; that an album that moves from the sands of Southern California to the streets of the Motor City takes place completely within one person’s head. It doesn’t make sense that behind the songs that are clear rays of sunshine is a dark and violent cloud.

Few others besides Gnarls Barkley could make The Odd Couple, an album full of MTV hits and radio-ready singles, that is at the same time full of melancholy despair. It doesn’t make sense, but it works.

If their debut album, St. Elsewhere, is a study and expression of a mind already gone and taken over by disease and dysfunction, The Odd Couple is about a mind in the process of giving up despair and grief. It is about a fragile personality whose surrounding get the best of it.

It begins just as St. Elsewhere did, with the crackle and hum of an antique projector machine. This shows that Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse do not mean to tell us something, but to show us something. The Odd Couple is dense with textures and images brought about the unique Gnarls sound.

The opening track, “Charity Case”, introduces us to the lonely protagonist - “Even my shadow leaves me alone at night/Oh, can’t you see/get, get, get away now” - with a deep blue bassline and show-tune finger-snaps and hand-claps. The narrative continues with “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul,” a mixture of twilight blues and heartbreak soul in which we see the him begin to give in to his pain - “Getting high cause I feel so low now, I know I’m out of control now” - and then turn to violence as an escape - “You better run right now, you best get ready to die” - in the hit single “Run.”

Out of his stout frame, Cee-Lo, through his nationally recognized voice, is able to convey multiple aspects of the troubled mind. His voice has a deep and diverse level of personality. He can be a bitch-n-moan-y teenager in “Whatever,” a decently-rational pessimist in “Surprise” and demented murderer in “Would Be Killer.”

This is not to say that the musical form isn’t always at odds with the lyrical content. “Would Be Killer” and “Open Book” are nightmares manifested in discomforting beats, foggy rhythms and demon-possessed vocals that deliver one of the most disturbing lines I’ve heard in a long time: “Oh, I’ve been interned by evil, so someone best love me right now.”

The Odd Couple is an album of curiosity. You can feel the tension of the mostly-upbeat pop and melancholy narrative. But who better to match the unmatchable than DJ Danger Mouse—the man who somehow married the Beatles with Jay-Z. He is able to bring together elements of Sixties Soul, tribal rhythms, bayou blues, epic movie score and modern mash-up in strange and harmonious dissonance.