Gnarls Barkley Seconds Its Emotion

Something's not right with Gnarls Barkley.

This isn't breaking news, given that the warped hip-hop/soul duo broke through with 2006's "Crazy," a remarkably intoxicating ode to mental illness. But on "The Odd Couple," the follow-up to their Grammy-winning debut, "St. Elsewhere," singer Cee-Lo Green and studio alchemist Danger Mouse seem even more disturbed than before as they ponder the human condition -- sounding angsty, conflicted, bereft and paranoid throughout the melancholy album's 13 tracks.

That's particularly true of Green, whose shower-singer warble is exceptionally blue and nervy. "Even my shadow leaves me all alone at night," he croaks on the shuffling album-opener "Charity Case." In the lurching soul jam "A Little Better," he makes like a self-loathing Curtis Mayfield, singing: "It's probably plain to see/That I got a whole lot of pain in me/And it will always remain in me." Over Danger Mouse's insistent drums and organ lines, Green sounds a siren in the insinuating lead single "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)," bleating: "All I'm saying is sometimes I'm more scared of myself."

Rushed into stores and online well ahead of its originally scheduled April 8 street date, thanks to Internet leaks, "The Odd Couple" is more pensive than playful, an odd, intriguing, half-great mix of anxiety and inventiveness on which Danger Mouse's towering walls of sound seem to be closing in on Green.

But that might be just the way the round mound of emo-soul sound likes it: On the haunted standout "Who's Gonna Save My Soul," Green declares, "Got some bad news this morning/Which in turn made my day."

DOWNLOAD THESE:"Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)," "Who's Gonna Save My Soul"