Bringing The Mouse Down

The new Danger Mouse album has had its fair share of attention on the office stereo over the past couple of months, and it’s left a distinctly underwhelming impression on Fly HQ; Broken Bells, Danger Mouse’s collaboration with The Shins’ frontman James Mercer, plods and plods and plods, not really going anywhere very, very slowly. That’s fair enough, I thought, Danger Mouse, AKA Brian Burton, was due a misstep at some point; after all, everything he does – whether it’s as producer/DJ/collaborator/passer-by – is lauded. By everyone. All the time; Burton has been the go-to man for anyone looking for sonic wizardry and extra credibility for a few years now. But, as I tried for the umpteenth time to convince myself that I was missing something spectacular from Broken Bells, I started wondering, could it be that Danger Mouse’s aura as a producer par excellence is a little bit of a sham? I mean, for someone so highly regarded – to the extent, probably, that my head’ll be on a stick by the time you’ve finished reading this blog – how many great things has Danger Mouse done, really?

There’s no denying the maverick genius of ‘The Grey Album’, the infamous bootleg that pitted The Beatles’ ‘The White Album’ against Jay-Z’s ‘The Black Album’ and brought Danger Mouse to prominence, its madcap, expertly-executed samples an astounding listen, but the Cease & Desist order put out on it by EMI leant Danger Mouse an eternal cloak of cool that, since then, he hasn’t really deserved, his dalliances with brilliance fleeting rather than permanent. First, the good stuff: Damon Albarn’s no production mug and knew what he was letting Gorillaz in for when he enlisted the ‘Mouse man for ‘Demon Days’ – Burton obviously made a good impression too, cos soon he was twiddling the knobs for Albarn on ‘The Good, The Bad & The Queen’. Both sound brilliant – Gorillaz is a sonic leap on from their debut, whilst ‘The Good…’ has a crisp, angelic fray to it that makes songs like ‘Herculean’ sound monumental and monumentally sad at the same time. And, away from production duties, no-one can knock just what an interstellar-smash Gnarls Barkley, his band with Cee-Lo, had with ‘Crazy’ – an effortlessly simple, great, pop song that fucking owned 2006.

But that’s about it – since then, there’s been a first Gnarls Barkley album, ‘St Elsewhere’, that played out in the shadow of ‘Crazy’ being the best song on it by a mile and a follow-up, ‘The Odd Couple’, that flopped dramatically – Gnarls Barkley went from playing London’s Hammersmith Apollo (capacity 5000) to London’s 229 (capacity 600) in just over a year. After that, Danger Mouse went back to the relatively safe territory of production, but, since ‘The Good, The Bad & The Queen’, the albums he’s worked on have been decidedly average; The Shortwave Set’s ‘Replica Sun Machine’ was patchy amid its storming moments of psychedelic euphoria, Martina Topley Bird’s ‘The Blue God’ failed to capture the melancholic soul that lit up her work with Massive Attack and Tricky, whilst, in the same manner that Josh Homme (another man whose “genius” might need revaluation – stay tuned, I’m on my way to becoming the world’s most cynical blogger, whooo!) blunted Arctic Monkeys’ sharp, spiky edges on ‘Humbug’, The Black Keys’ Danger Mouse-produced ‘Attack & Release’ saw the US duo’s scuzz-blues somewhat blanded out. Add that to his work on Sparklehorse’s anaemic ‘Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain’, Danger Mouse’s sole production success in the past couple of years comes in his guiding of Beck back to aceness on ‘Modern Guilt’. Whether or not ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’, his collaboration with Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous and David Lynch, is imbued with genius is unknown, given that, for reasons unknown, EMI refuse to release it.

But maybe it’s fitting that his career has come full circle – Danger Mouse’s reputation, after all, was given a rocketed boost up the arse by EMI pulling ‘The Grey Album’ from cyberworld in the first place. Maybe it’ll give Brian Burton the fire in the belly that fuelled his early work with Gorillaz, or rediscover the pop savviness at the heart of ‘Crazy’. Christ knows something needs to give, cos Broken Bells is the sound of a man whose only Danger is one of comfort and complacency – perhaps it’s about time Danger Mouse shook up his world and rediscovered the Midas touch everyone keeps banging on about. Then, and only then, he might be able to shake up ours too…