Growing Pains
Follow-up albums from Gnarls Barkley and Ghostland Observatory are disappointing; Beach House stands out with their sophomore album.
By Kriston Capps
May 9, 2008
Gnarls Barkley, “The Odd Couple”
If you caught Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 smash single “Crazy” and ended up thinking the single was more hype than substance, rest assured, you weren’t alone. I was one of many who thought that the single would be worth the price of the CD alone—yet I rarely listened to the album. True, there’s plenty to be said for the rest of St. Elsewhere: Cee-Lo’s pinched but soulful voice is strongest when he shows off his vocal range on a song like “Transformer” or mixes it for a number like the spooky “Boogie Monster” (a Halloween mix staple, to be sure).
But any suspicions you may have harbored after “Crazy” took to the stratosphere that Gnarls Barkley might not amount to the most high-flying collaboration in hip-pop are more than confirmed by Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse’s follow-up, The Odd Couple.
One thing that Cee-Lo’s voice can’t do is multiply. It’s a poor instrument for making a choir sound in “Going On”; the outro to the song features Cee-Lo’s tinny timbre laid and relaid in an OK Computer–style atmospheric swell. Notwithstanding that effect, the song is a romp, a rambunctious Outkast-style upbeat dance number with a bit of Sunday-morning Gospel choir and organ tacked on for fair measure.
A hip-hop murder ballad, “Would-Be Killer,” shows Cee-Lo taking liberties with his voice in order to mimic the narrative. It’s more grating than offensive or creepy, especially when something that sounds like a sitar appears as though an afterthought. Unfortunately, Cee-Lo goes for the same sing-song strategy on “Whatever,” pinching his voice into a petulant mallrat’s whine. It is, to be sure, deeply annoying. There’s a couple more small moments in the song that grate: A super-tinny, hyper–high-pitched, sped-up vocal trick appears a few times on the chorus. There’s nothing wrong with that, exactly, except that it’s a signature effect of a number of artists who call Baltimore home: including Dan Deacon, OCDJ, and The Videohippos. Charm City has gotten a lot of play for its rambunctious club sound, but when their effects appear on Gnarls Barkley’s latest album it feels like the big guys are ripping off the little guys.
But hey, no honor among thieves. Maybe, then, Danger Mouse should have taken even more from these DJs. His contributions to The Odd Couple aren’t distinctive; in fact, standout measures are rare. “Surprise” features some forgettable love lyrics but a distinctive sample of a tra-la-la chorus, one that might belong to Grizzly Bear or Panda Bear or any number of ursine-inspired bands today playing with complex choral harmonies. It’s a decent track, though a loud high-hat beat seems to sit on top of the snare drum and orchestration rather than fit into it.
Certainly Danger Mouse’s biggest mistake was failing to stop Cee-Lo from making some appalling decisions with his voice. “Blind Mary” is another irritatingly sing-song track and the choice of kiddie-midi sounding synth instrumentation didn’t help at all. “Blind Mary” and “Whatever” are less than serious. They’re bad enough to impugn this whole enterprise as a less-than-serious effort.
There is some hope for redemption. An album pegged to “She Knows,” one shining light on this album, might have been an interesting one. A far-away flute and twinkling chimes over a handclap beat stand apart from the other music on the album. Cee-Lo manages to sound creepy on “She Knows” without contorting his voice in an aggravating way (“It wouldn’t surprise me to see her ghost/ She would like me to know she knows”), even though the rhyme-focused lyrics are a bit busy for Mouse’s stripped down track. This one song is good enough to leave you convinced that you might yet be wrong about Gnarls Barkley. Perhaps next time around they might produce something more substantial, more fulfilling, than just a catchy single.
Beach House, “Devotion”
On their eponymous debut, Beach House put two questions to rest. Namely, could Victoria Legrand’s voice live up to her name? Her voice and name are both regal and haunting. When coupled with an electric organ, Legrand’s voice summons visions of Virginia Woolf lining her pockets or Ophelia plucking violets or other sad-sack but heroic, even mythic, women. Second, could such a sound work with another performer? The answer’s yes: Alex Scally on slide guitar manages to be not totally overshadowed by the celestial, floating tones of Legrand’s keyboard and vocals (and name)—another improbable feat.
Beach House found a sweet spot, breaking new ground both in folk music and its intersection with vintage sounds. They’re more accessible than Josephine Foster and not cloying like Joanna Newsom—and Legrand’s every bit as talented as either. The band’s follow up, Devotion, doesn’t represent any significant new innovations for the Baltimore-based duo. But it is something of a discovery: the well they tapped on their first album runs deep.
“Wedding Bell” captures the jaunty spirit of 2006’s “Master of None,” with Scally’s slide guitar adding the perfect Western fringe to lollygagging, clodhopping, harpsichord arpeggios that sound like they were written on the range. “Oh, but your wish is my command,” lulls Legrand, doing her best impression of a cowboy’s sweetheart, “But is your heart still mine for sale?” Fuzzy guitar adds some brute musk to the bridge.
In fact, a lot of the songs on Devotion take a cue from “Master of None,” at least in terms of complexity. “Heart of Chambers” trades country saunter for soulful waltz (Beach House adores waltz time), with Scally’s guitar taking a more prominent role. Legrand’s keys simply shimmer. “In your heart of chambers/ Where you sit/ With your picture books and your ancient wi-i-i-it,” sings Legrand, descending down the scale on the last note with breathy hops. “In that nook I found you/ Soul in time/ Would you be the one to carry me?” She ends on a retreating note, with lingering chorus that rises upward and outward.
Beach House puts its stargaze stamp on “Some Things Last a Long Time,” a Daniel Johnston tune. (Curiously, it winds up sounding like The Vaselines’ “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.”) But with “Gila,” Beach House seems to be creating its own version of a tradition. “I’ve been blessed with a kingdom half mine,” sing Legrand, after a long lovelorn chorus of “oh oh oh” and “Gila ah ah.” That tradition might also belong to women like Foster or Newsome or Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick—or, hell, highbrow fantasy novelist Susannah Clark, for that matter. It is a proud tradition of women whose talent lay in creating highly visual chamber narratives through their work.
Ghostland Observatory, “Robotique Majestique”
“Opening Credits,” the first track on Ghostland Observatory’s Robotique Majestique, sounds pretty much like what its title suggests: It’s a creeping, superficial, melodramatic score for electronic organ and Lost in Space–style effects, fit for a thriller about werewolves in space or Dracula at the disco. The album that unfolds from there is a let-down of a follow-up to the Austin, Texas–based duo’s breakthrough dance-rock album, Paparazzi Lightning. Ghostland Observatory decided to experiment, but ended up leaving out some key elements that made their sophomore album so great.
Featuring keyboardist Thomas Ross Turner’s syncopated clicktronics and singer Aaron Behrens’s staggered-and-strained vocals, “Heavy Heart” could easily be a cover of a Sugar Cubes song. It’s as dark and infectious as “Stranger Lover” or “Sad Sad City,” their best singles from Paparazzi Lightning. Here Ghostland shows it strength in managing downtempo beats as dance-floor movers, not unlike LCD Soundsystem. Notwithstanding Behrens’s squeal, Ghostlandfavors the slow and the low: Turner’s synth tends toward the lower register, and the beat is rarely more furious than walking speed.
On Robotique Majestique, Ghostland may have slowed the pace too much. The minor-key, throbbing synthesizer on “No Place for Me” is repetitive in the way that, say, Trent Reznor uses to good effect on songs like “Down In It”—as a vehicle for his lyrics. But the words that Behrens sings— something between a spirited imperative to dance and a standard pop-song confession—fall awfully short of a stand-alone feature. Meanwhile, Behrens’s vocal range has settled into a comfortable Freddie Mercury rut. Which, to be sure, is no mean feat—but he rarely reaches for the shrieks and screams that punctuated Paparazzi Lightning.
Songs on Ghostland’s third album are also noticeably longer than on their previous efforts. Whereas most of Paparazzi Lightning‘s dance tracks clock in at a speedy 2.5 to 3 minutes, the benchmark on Majestique is closer to 4 minutes. Long segues, like the Flock of Seagulls–esquefadeout on the five-minute-long title track, drag on. The instrumental “Holy Ghost White Noise” is the only song on the album to prominently feature Behrens on guitar; on the same coin, Turner’s electronically enhanced vox have mostly disappeared.
Behrens’ strumming and Turner’s vox are notably missing on “Club Soda,” the album’s closer. The song is a boring, standard-issue synth solo that groups like Chromeo have already exhausted. “HFM” is an admirable stab at a harder, Lightning Bolt–style sound, with Turner adopting a heavy bass synth and driving bass drum and Behrens screaming through a megaphone. But what’s distinguished Ghostland Observatory in the past isn’t sonic experimentation but rather swagger, and that’s what’s gone missing on more-moody-than-swarthy Robotique Majestique.
Kriston Capps is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. He writes for the Washington City Paper and blogs at Grammar Police.
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— Dancetastic Funbunch - Sep 28, 11:53 PM - #f your face. get some taste.
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