Even your emotions have an echo in so much space

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

07/05/06 : St Elsewhere - Gnarls Barkley

I did listen to this back in the day and I remember it being bearable, but very much trading on the glory of "Crazy" - it will be interesting to see what I think of it after a break of 16+ years.

It appears my opinion was a little harsh - there's enough here away from "Crazy" to maintain my interest.  Some of the songs feel a little unstructured, but I get the impression that's what they were looking for - some kind of "free-form hip-hop" or whatever they call it, giving a kinda Kanye feel to it (back when he was merely a recording artist, rather than whatever he is now).  It feels like this has involved lots of skill and there's plenty here to reward re-listens, but I'm afraid I'm unlikely to be drawn back.  I like the album cover as well.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on its second week of a 23 week run, having debuted at #1 and it managed another 23 weeks over another four runs taking us into '07.  The top five this week were Snow Patrol (a new entry about to start a 106 week run), Shayne Ward (that's gonna be an interesting one to listen to soon), Tool and Pearl Jam (both new entries).  And the next new entries were Nina Simone (#20) and Scott Walker again (#24) - that modern music was really storming the charts.

Wikipedia has less on the album than I expected but amusingly tells me that the duo (CeeLo Green and DangerMouse) created a persona for Gnarls Barkley including the facts that he "taught the band Kraftwerk English, as well as set up a meeting between the group Wu-Tang Clan and members of the Stuckist art movement".  The album was well received critically (winning the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album) and commercially, selling over three million copies globally and getting to #4 in the US.

"Customers also listened to" Gotye, Outkast (yeah, I can totally see that now), Mark Ronson, Foster The People, M.I.A. and Lorde - what a peculiar mix!  I didn't love this, but I can see it has plenty to recommend it and it''s undergone a bit of a re-evaluation in my view, although I suspect I'll forget this at the first opportunity and go back to being "it's all about the "Crazy", people".  Sorry!

30/04/06 - An album not aimed at me
14/05/06 - An album very much of its time

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