Gnarls Barkley: The Odd Couple

Gnarls Barkley is one of those side projects that on first listen sounds new and fresh and groundbreaking and different (but at the same time familiar) and all the stuff you love to hear in your music. However on a second listen, it starts to reveal its gimmickry and relative sameness from track to track. And what sounded originally like a great soundtrack to a fun evening begins to hit some atonal notes and sounds like a lot less fun than their first album. By the third listen you’ll find yourself hitting fast forward on more tracks than not, as Cee-Lo’s voice will begin to feel a bit like that worm/eel/armadillo thing that burrowed into Chekov’s ear in Wrath of Khan. Perhaps this album wasn’t made for me, but I’m having a little trouble figuring out who it’s for. I think it’s like the throwback Ford Thunderbird or Plymouth Prowler that they only made for three years each and then dropped from production because even the car company execs knew the public’s appetite for novelty is small and the wow-factor short-lived. Show me a douche with a Prowler and I’ll try to dig up some white guy who was in college in 2008, bought this album, thought it was really cool when he was stoned and hasn’t listened to it since.