I’m Going Slightly Mad

Gnarls Barkley came out of nowhere.

Actually, that’s not true. Brian Burton and Thomas Callaway, more famously known by the monikers Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green, had led productive careers in rap and hip-hop before teaming up, garnering a good deal of critical acclaim along the way. Besides, Danger Mouse is notorious for collaborating with seemingly anyone he feels like—and he’s produced some damn fine albums. So it’s really not so surprising that these two should get together to cut a record, but to the average guy who didn’t keep up with hip-hop, they seemed to come out of nowhere. Almost overnight many people went from having never heard of either Danger Mouse or Cee-Lo Green to singing “Crazy” over and over again on every street corner.

St. Elsewhere hit stores in May 2006, a few weeks before Gnarls Barkley would solidify their place in ‘06 cultural immortality by performing their hit single in Star Wars garb (VH1 will surely touch upon that when I Love the ’00s comes around in twenty years). It’s easy to assume that such a stunt might partially explain the runaway success of “Crazy,” but that doesn’t give the song enough credit. Named best song of 2006 by Rolling Stone (which aptly described it as “the song nobody even pretended not to like”), “Crazy” took off simply because it was a good, catchy pop song with enough hip-hop and soul on the track to give it something special. Danger Mouse’s purpose in life is apparently to write and sample fine tracks, and Cee-Lo’s vocals resonate with a beautiful (but still cool) neo-soul sound that even puts Al Green in his place. And it had a great beat. St. Elsewhere is packed with similar numbers, each with it’s own distinctive feel but all bound by a common style and themes of mental instability, paranoia, and even suicidal fantasies. That’s because St. Elsewhere is a concept album held together under the umbrella of insanity, with such ideas often reflected in lyrics as well as the presentation itself—there’s definitely a noticeable (but balanced) juxtaposition between Cee-Lo’s light, airy vocals and Danger Mouse’s heavy, deliberate beats (particularly on “Just a Thought,” a discourse on considering suicide—echoes of multiple personalities, anyone?). The result is a vivid portrait of a mind in disarray, and insanity has never sounded so fun.

St. Elsewhere is a delightful little album, even to those who are less than fond of hip-hop. Although the standouts here include the title track, the apocalyptic “Storm Coming,” the relentlessly upbeat (but fundamentally depressing) “Smiley Faces,” the schizophrenic “Who Cares?” and the aforementioned “Crazy” and “Just a Thought,” the whole album is consistently entertaining and provoking (not to mention the last line of “The Boogie Monster,” which is one of the funniest musical punch lines of the year). Sauntering through a broken hellscape of dark themes with a smile of its face, St. Elsewhere tap-dances its way around its heavy subject matter and never loses that ever-important sense of fun.