Reviews: Tool, Gnarls Barkley

Reviews: Tool, Gnarls Barkley

Tool "10,000 Days": Aidin Vaziri | Some Tool fans were so distraught when a leaked version of "10,000 Days" hit the Internet a few weeks ago that they were resolutely convinced the whole thing was a fake, going so far as to look for hidden messages in the album artwork, skewing it just right to read "April Fool's Day." Well, the joke is on them, because this sucker is the real thing, and for those who have heard it all before from Tool, it's real boring. Coming five years after the double-platinum "Lateralus," the Los Angeles metal band's fourth studio album seems strangely subdued, tilting heavily toward moody experiments that take longer to unfold than the album's title suggests. Not that the whole thing is a wash -- there are still some head-banging thrills to be found in tracks like "Vicarious" and "Jambi." It's just going to take a patient person to find them.

Gnarls Barkley "St. Elsewhere": Aidin Vaziri | Getting tired of waiting for OutKast to come up with a worthy successor to its visionary 2003 album, "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below"? Try this instead, a studio concoction by Danger Mouse (the Grammy-nominated producer behind Gorillaz' multi-platinum "Demon Days" and the illicit "Grey Album") and vocalist Cee-Lo Green (oversize member of Goodie Mob and songwriter to the stars like Pussycat Dolls and Ludacris) that effectively turns everything on its head. "I remember when I lost my mind/ There was something so pleasant about that place," goes the blues-infused first single, "Crazy." Sure enough, over the course of the next hour, the duo delivers a lush, soulful album that manages to pay tribute to the Violent Femmes, bad '80s medical dramas and, in a more unsavory moment, necrophilia without sounding like a joke. The bar has officially been raised.