Girl Talk good, simple mash-up

By Jordan Sargent
July 9, 2008

Liking— forget even defending— Girl Talk has become an unenviable and treacherous proposition.

Ever since his delirious, and let’s face it, canonical, 2005 album Night Ripper, Girl Talk (the checks say Gregg Gillis) has become one of the most divisive faces in indie-music. His fans, mostly college kids and young professionals, are so rabid that Gillis was long ago able to drop his nine to five in favor of jetsetting between shows in Omaha and Barcelona.

His haters, and there are many, deride everything from his blatantly illegal style of music to the way his (mostly “hip”) fans dance at his shows. And those detractors have points. They say Gillis’ rap plus classic rock formula is doing considerably less than reinventing the wheel, and, technically, they are right. Even more right, is that a good portion of Gillis’ fan base are indie rockers at heart; people with 1,500 Wilco plays on last.fm who clowned “Laffy Taffy” until it was looped into anthemia over a Matt and Kim song. It’s a strawman, of course, but relatively true nonetheless.

Thankfully, when Gillis’ is cramming samples down the garbage disposal and flipping switch none of that matters. And when it comes down to it, Gillis isn’t reinventing the wheel as much as revolutionizing it. No mash-up DJ has ever seen his success, because none of them have deserved it.

Night Ripper was more than just a DJ mix. Two years later, surprises gone and vocal samples mere Wikipedia footnotes, it’s still incredibly invigorating and singularly genius. The fact that its money shots— the “Say It Ain’t So” solo in “Too Deep,” the famous Biggie/Elton bit in “Smash Your Head”— still floor is a testament to Gillis’ talents as a craftsmen and dramatist. Not only does Night Ripper not run out of ideas, Gillis unleashes the best ones at precisely the right times.

Feed the Animals, his fourth album, has decidedly less moments like that. It instead resembles Gillis’ ramshackle and generally straightforward live sets, which succeed due to his knack for a good, but, simple mash-up. At times, this leads to total hands-in-the-air moments, like on, um, “Hands in the Air”, where Gillis loops Yo Majesty’s “fuck that shit” vocals over Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You”. In other spots, like during the “Roc Boys (And the Winner Is…)”/”Paranoid Android” moment in “Set It Off”, it leads to embarrassingly flaccid moments of amateruism.

The most notable thing, though, about Feed the Animals is its striking number of tender moments, with Mary J. Blige and Sinead O’ Connor samples peeling away the rock riffs to reveal something we didn’t know Gillis had: a heart.

So even though Feed the Animals never really scrapes the same stratospheres entered by Night Ripper, it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable and mindless album, one that features just enough great blends to keep your eyes dizzy. It gets a little formulaic in spots, but then again, that was never not the point. Its only real downfall is that it doesn’t really kick into gear until about halfway through, but the first half is hardly boring.

Where Gillis goes from here, with steady paper and a steadier fanbase, is again anyone’s guess. If titling this album Feed the Animals is any indication, it might be away from the spotlight. If that’s so, the pros on his sometimes uneven but lovable fourth album far outweigh the cons. It would be a fitting parting shot.

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Girl Talk good, simple mash-up

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