Gnarls Barkley

The Fillmore, San Francisco, California, 7/19/2006

In any other context, the vision of Cee-Lo at the helm of a sold-out venue full of screaming girls would be, let’s face it, something of an anomaly. Yet such is the beauty of a internet-fueled economy where a knob-tweaker like Danger Mouse and a singer/rapper better known in hip hop circles than most teenager’s ipods can come together and crack the scene wide open with a concept like Gnarls Barkley. The trouble with an international hit like "Crazy," their thumping anthem to suicidal psychosis, is that fame has escalated beats and good fun into a marketing mania. Gnarls Barkley is almost too well known for its thematic costuming, its dual-star line-up, and the hype constructed around its fictional namesake personality. The cynic in me quietly worried that I was about to be subjected to something that was more kitsch than content, more DAT than dope. How would Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse turn their 30 minute Technicolor trip hop romp, St. Elsewhere, into a viable set of songs?

The answer, apparent the minute the band came out dressed in its signature hospital- themed OR scrubs and nurse outfits, turned out to be sheer physical volume. Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, had employed a veritable performing army that fanned out across the stage: three back-up singers, the required “backbone” of drummer, bassist, keyboardist, guitarist, and an electric string quartet. Throw in the mighty Mouse himself, and the songs became a blast of stereophonic rainbow, each presented as slightly looser jams of the recorded originals: the jangly Motown beats of "Smiley Faces," their cover of "Gone Daddy Gone," and the sexy swamp rock of "The Boogie Monster," a song that Lux Interior would be proud to cover. more