Music

A few months ago Gnarls Barkley, a duet comprising prankish Gorillaz producer Danger Mouse and freaky Atlanta rapper Cee-Lo Green, might have been dismissed as another arty hip hop project, one to file alongside cloudDEAD or DJ Spooky. But the 7 million-odd sales of the last Gorillaz album, along with the runaway success of the single ‘Crazy’, has suddenly made this one of the biggest releases of the year.

The first thing you notice is that ‘St Elsewhere’ isn’t really a hip hop LP. Cee-Lo might have emerged from Atlanta’s Goodie Mob, and Danger Mouse might have made his name making hip hop with Jemini and MF Doom (and for his seditious ‘Grey Album’, which spliced together Jay-Z and The Beatles), but structurally most of the songs on ‘St Elsewhere’ share a traditional R&B structure. ‘Smiley Faces’, with its Motown backbeat, could have been written by Holland-Dozier-Holland; ‘Just A Thought’ wouldn’t sound out of place on a 1970s Bobby Womack album; and Sam Cooke would sound at ease crooning on ‘Who Cares’. All of them showcase Cee-Lo’s exquisite gospel voice, a big-lunged baritone that gets really thrilling when he starts to hit the very highest notes in his range.

But it’s the mischievous production which lifts this from the R&B swamp, with enough rock-friendly quirks to hook in the indie kids. Danger Mouse’s sonic pawprints are all over the place: that distinctive plucked bass that you hear on ‘Crazy’ is the same voicing from Gorillaz’ ‘Kids With Guns’; his squeaky toytown organ on ‘Who Cares’ sounds like a Mellotron from a Beatles album; the title track sounds like it’s based around an acoustic sample from a ’60s folk track; the cover version of the Violent Femmes’ ‘Gone Daddy Gone’ is subverted by DM’s skittering, chopped-up drum beats.

The album runs out of steam towards the end – DM’s rock-friendly production sounds less interesting when Cee-Lo raps – but there are enough potential hits here to ensure that ‘St Elsewhere’ will be the sound of the summer.