It's raining music!

So, I've been promising a music review of Gnarls Barkley for a while. After living your lives in suspensful anticipation, I am finally going to deliver (plus Bright Eyes, and maybe some other brief cameos). Because I know that you guys don't have anything better to do with your lives than sit around and wait for me to post about an artist that half of you probably have never heard of and the other half don't care about. Anyway, moving forward

I went out and bought Gnarls Barkley's album St. Elsewhere a week or so ago after much internal debate in my head. Gnarls Barkley is a collaboration between Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green. I've really enjoyed Danger Mouse's work on other discs such as the Danger Doom collaboration between MF Doom and him, and the work he did with Gorillaz last album, so I finally decided to give it a whirl. After listening through it a couple times, I've decided that it's good, but not phenomenal. Crazy, the single that's been released off the disc, is ok, but it doesn't really stand up to multiple listenings. That's kind of how I feel about the whole album, though. It's fun. It's cool to listen to. But, if I were to really listen to it with a critical ear, it wouldn't become one of my favorites. Some songs that have stood out to me are, Smiley Faces and The Last Time. Also, they did a cover of the Violent Femmes song Gone Daddy Gone, which was kinda cool, but didn't really do anything new for the song. So, in review, I'd give St. Elsewhere maybe 3 out of 5 stars. Fun, cool, but not classic at all.

I also bought a disc by Bright Eyes called I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, a little bit ago. I've heard most of the music on this disc before, because Marvin had it, but I never really gave it much critical attention. I just liked it. Bright Eyes comes from Omaha, Nebraska, and the guy behind the music, Conor Oberst has been hailed as this generation's Bob Dylan. Now, I don't think that's a fair comparison, because it gives people a preconcieved notion of what his music is going to sound like. Granted "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning" does have the folksy sound that much of Bob Dylan's music did, but it also goes in a completely different direction. The music is simple and straightforward, but at the same time, completely unexpected. It sweeps you through a gamut of emotions, from jubilant to hopeless, lovelorn to raging. Oberst proves that simplicity can be much more poignant than complicated melodies and harmonies. This is definately a classic.

Speaking of the Violent Femmes, I bought a live disc of theirs a while ago called "Viva Wisconsin." I'd been exposed to their standards a while ago, like "Blister in the Sun" and "Gone Daddy Gone," but hadn't really listened to much else. A friend of mine, though, really liked them, so I decided to pick up their live album, and see what I thought. Now, until recently, I thought that the Femmes were just a local Wisconsin band, that no one outside of the vicinity of Milwaukee had really heard of, except for maybe Blister in the Sun. Apparently I was wrong. As much as I enjoyed the songs of theirs that I knew already, some of the others were so much...darker and more intruiging. My personal favorite though was "Dahmer's Dead," celebrating Jeffery Dahmer's death. Weird, dark, but kind of funny. Anyways, I loved "Viva Wisconsin."

So, now I've gotten my music critic tendencies out. You'll probably be spared my opinions of music again for a little while.