r e a l r e v i e w . i e

Dark Night Of The Soul – Dangermouse and Sparklehorse
featuring The Flaming Lips, David Lynch, Vic Chesnutt, and many more

Behind this release is the crafty producer Danger Mouse, and rather than tell you how good it is (better than alright…*pause*…but…*sigh*), let me ask you this: What the france do producers actually do? In the old days, producers got praise only when live acts sounded a bit shit without them, or when pop divas spent millions to work with them on oversung R’n'B rubbish. However, the last decade has been dominated (thankfully) by multi-instrumentalists, and that includes production. Neither super sound engineers like Rudy Van Gelder nor evil svengalis like Pete Waterman, the new breed – Timbaland,  Dilla, Madlib – are  a species of very talented knob twiddlers, loop-diggers and beat conductors. But how much of the sound – and what parts of it – are they actually responsible for?

Danger Mouse is on my radar for finally getting Beck to record a proper coherent album, but Beck is an experienced producer in his own right and the soundscapes on Modern Guilt are recognisably his progressions from The Information and Sea Change… except it’s a bit choppy. And there’s a few more drums. Um, is that it?

Conversely, Broken Bells, his collaboration with James Mercer is a logical if achingly unfortunate step further away from the rocking glory of Oh Inverted World, towards vocals-driven pop with a bit of a nice background. Except it’s very smooth.

Of course DM (as Penfold might call him) will always be best known as one half of Gnarls Barkley and all that that entails, both in terms of – ahem – talent, and commercial success. Interestingly, while a lot of it sounds like Diana Ross on steroids, there are songs like Who’s Gonna Save My Soul? that could lift directly onto Dark Night – angst, beats, Hammond organ and, as with Modern Guilt, acoustic guitars lifted effortlessly to the front of the mix. This is the meat and potatoes of Dark Night, the undercurrent that holds so many artists coherently in one album, and it’s none too shabby a sound. It’s possible to see its limits in the context of MF Doom, whose collaborations with Madlib and Clutchy Hopkins are just so rich and joyous that they make Danger Doom, good as it is, sound flat and unadventurous by comparison.

*pause*…but…*sigh*

I’m going to weasel out of reviewing the individual contributions by saying this bit is about producers, but ultimately this is likely to be one of those albums that the cool people force down our ears for the rest of the year in studenty places, wanky bars and clothes shops. So rather than go out and buy the thing, one might have to hole up and actively hide from it. If it does break, it won’t necessarily be on the radio like Mumford and Sons or Norah bleedin’ Jones. No, this one is set to go off like Dummy or White Blood Cells, in your cool friends’ flats, presumably after they heard it in the shops buying yet another pair of multi-coloured trainers. I’m going to be cynical for this paragraph at least and say it’s commercial stuff (any producers greatest trick) and the dial is set at ‘a little bit wuuh!’. Studenty types looking for something a bit more edgy than, say, Keane, are going to be fodder for this record. Others are going to have to ride out the storm, thankful at least that it will drown out the XX for as long as it plays.

All in all, though? Hats off to DM for fashioning such a strong sound – maybe having a midas touch isn’t a crime after all.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.