CeeLo’s too far from the edge
WE’RE ten years on from The Lady Killer, wherein CeeLo Green pulled classic soul kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Literally so, on the inspired and hilarious tantrum that was his charttopping hit F*** You! In the intervening decade, CeeLo has seemingly done his damnedest to get cancelled yet somehow escaped it. Which is, at least musically speaking, good news. He’s a special talent and when he sings, it’s always worth listening. Not only because he has a fabulous voice, mind but also because he has a remarkable imagination, which flourished most memorably in the modern psychedelic soul of Gnarls Barkley, his collaboration with Danger Mouse.
On his first album in five years – titled after his birth name, in the way artists do when they want to imply ‘this is the real me’ – the voice is much in evidence but that imagination less so. CeeLo Green Is Thomas Callaway is perhaps the most trad thing CeeLo’s ever done. In the company of producer and co-writer Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, he visits a
selection of old-school soul styles with uncanny skill and aplomb, as well as assured songwriting. He ranges from 1950s crooning to 1970s smoothas-silk Philly, taking in gospelpop and on-the-corner funk along the way. There’s little here that doesn’t slip by as an easy, classy pleasure but the thing one misses is the delectable weirdness that gives his best stuff its edge. You have to wait for eerie closing track The Way to get a taste of that. CeeLo’s still got it. You just wish he was a little more willing to mess with it.