Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Gnarls Barkley's first single -- the spine-tingling U.K. hit "Crazy" -- takes an old-time spiritual and turns it into festival-friendly funk, as it eagerly jumps into the loony bin: "I remember when I lost my mind/There was something so pleasant about that place," Cee-Lo sings in his soaring, seductive rasp. There's a creeping dementia to all of St. Elsewhere, the genre-bending debut from the Goodie Mob rapper-crooner and Gorillaz beat-brewer Danger Mouse. "Just a Thought" finds our protagonist fighting off suicidal impulses as booming drums disappear suddenly and a nylon-string guitar loop appears trapped in a purgatory of its own making. Then Cee-Lo intones the crucial couplet: "I prefer peace/Wouldn't have to have one bloody possession/But essentially I'm an animal/So just what do I do with all the aggression?" But there's joy among the pain: a daft cover of the Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone" and "Transformer," a robot spaz-out where Cee-Lo lets us know "I'm a microchip off the old block." And the disco-proud album closer, "The Last Time," poses a question: "When was the last time you danced?" At which point you get up and do exactly that.