Gnarls Barkley @ The Minnesota State Fair

Wednesday, after gorging on a variety of greasy, fatty foods on a stick and wandering the various buildings - technology, art (see crop art above), agriculture, animals, bazaar, etc - at The Great Minnesota Get Together, Lise and I went to see Gnarls Barkley perform at the grand stand. Weather was not on our side for this one, though it waited to get really bad until the concert was over.

Opening for them was Minneapolis band Cloud Cult. I tend to automatically enjoy alt rock bands who incorporate string instruments into their music. Their music is really pretty and they had a good energy. Cloud Cult also incorporates visual art into their performances, as they have painters who are members of the band and paint on stage off and on through their sets. That was fun to watch, as I was standing right behind one of the painters (we managed to secure spots right in front, slightly stage left). They then auction off the paintings after every show.

I have to say Gnarls Barkley was just slightly disappointing. I expected them to have more energy considering how upbeat and danceable most of their music is. I was also surprised at how inconspicuous Danger Mouse was. I expected him to have more of a co-frontman role, but he was pretty hard to distinguish from the rest of the back up band (with the exception of his sparkly suit coat) and he actually had less energy than a lot of the band members. Cee-Lo was fun to watch and he had decent energy, but I would've liked to see him dance more. I think perhaps he was feeling a bit under the weather though (no pun intended) because his voice didn't seem 100% either. Or perhaps he was joking when he had the audience sing most of their big hit Crazy because "his throat was scratchy." But it was still a fun show with great music and I still danced some of the thousands of calories that I consumed during the day off.

No One Said It Would Be Easy [mp3] - Cloud Cult - "Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)" (iTunes)
Run (I'm A Nature Disaster) [mp3] - Gnarls Barkley - "The Odd Couple" (iTunes)

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