GNARLS BARKLEY AT CENTRAL PARK'S SUMMERSTAGE

I keep going back and forth in my thinking about Gnarls Berkley. On the one hand, I've long adored Cee-Lo and I'm happy to see him finally hit it big -- St. Elsewhere just went platinum, he announced at Thursday night's show. I think it's an excellent album, a tight set of fun, adventurous and genre-bending but accessible tunes, one of which will likely (and deservedly) go down in music history as a truly classic pop song.

On the other hand, as with anything so immensely popular as "Crazy," there seems to be a Gnarls backlash emerging in certain circles, and I admit I'm starting to fall victim to it. What bothers me -- and I know this may sound naive -- is that the marketing of Cee-Lo & Danger Mouse's goofy image has so overtaken their music. At the show in Central Park, they came on stage with a 13-piece band all dressed in prep-school garb, playing "Another Brick in the Wall," and announced themselves as "The School of Rock." Now, for those that don't know me, this theatric entrance combined three or four of my favorite things: Cee-Lo, Pink Floyd, and a hilarious Richard Linklater film (about music!) starring Jack Black. But all I could think was, alright, enough already with the damn costumes!

To their credit, they put on a pretty solid show (albeit with a few kinks that still need to be ironed out). The crowd was happy. I wasn't sure how it would go, especially because they only have one (short) album worth of material. They filled out their set with a couple of covers, in addition to the Violent Femmes' "Gone Daddy Gone," which appears on the CD. Unfortunately, the other two covers (of a song by The Greenhornes and an obscure Doors track) were total buzzkills. No one knew them and they just weren't strong enough performances to get an audience excited about something it had never heard before.

But when Gnarls were on, they were on. The more rocking, aggressive numbers, like "Just a Thought," worked best live. Throughout, they stuck pretty close to the album versions, except for "Transformer" and "Feng Shui" which they slowed down (perhaps out of necessity).

Cee-Lo sounded good -- he's never had the greatest voice, technically, but he makes up for it with his spirit. He really started to get into the groove with "The Last Time," but I kept wishing he'd let loose even more. Above all, I wished he'd drop at least one rhyme or two. Nada. Cee-Lo is a jaw-droppingly nimble and lyrical MC -- he is arguably a better rapper than a singer. So it was kind of bizarre, when you think about it. This man has quite a body of work to draw from. Two solo albums and three with Goodie Mob. Would it have been so weird for him to give the crowd even a small taste of his past?