via Reuters
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Observed over Stellas in the lounge at the Soho Grand, Danger Mouse and James Mercer make an unlikely pair.
Mister Mouse -- whose birth name is Brian Burton -- has a neatly trimmed Afro and goatee; he could be the founder of some startup that combines social networking, crowd-sourcing and, say, cats. Mercer, best known for fronting the indie rock act the Shins, looks like Kevin Spacey. Burton represents his home base of Los Angeles -- he's a multiracial genre-crossing musician whose iPhone screensaver is a picture of ferrets dressed as characters from "The Wizard of Oz." Mercer lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, who owns an organic bedding company, and two kids. He worries about public schools and his backyard compost pile.
But when one half of Gnarls Barkley and the man behind Natalie Portman's favorite band met at a festival in 2004, things clicked. They kept in touch, hung out at other fests and finally tied the knot in 2008 and formed Broken Bells. Now, almost two years later, the pair is about to release a self-titled album, due March 9 on Columbia.
"It was good timing for both of us," Mercer says. "I was trying to figure stuff out and I wanted to do something different. I tossed around the idea of a solo record, but in the end, I'm glad Brian was looking for someone to work with, because it would have been crazy for me to do it on my own."
The album the pair created is multilayered and almost psychedelic, tethered by Mercer's steady vocals -- and it manages to sound almost nothing like the Shins or Gnarls Barkley.
Mercer is quick to add that the new project doesn't mean that the Shins are defunct. Burton says that Gnarls Barkley is on hiatus while he works on Broken Bells and Cee-Lo records a solo album, but notes that the future is unpredictable. "I never feel like I have to do anything," he says. From his pioneering Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up "The Grey Album" to his production work on Beck records, Burton's career has been built on anything but predictability.
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Reuters - Danger Mouse, James Mercer ring in Broken Bells
