Girl Talk: Feed The Animals

Gregg Gillis spent Night Ripper, his 2006 album recorded

as Girl Talk, scrambling dozens of recent pop and hip-hop hits (along with

innumerable older songs) into a stew that shifts without warning from one

ridiculous combo to another. This fascinated people, for good reason: Gillis

has a real gift for juxtaposition, and his constructs moved even as they

shifted from rhythm to rhythm. That's still the case on Feed The Animals, the fourth overall Girl

Talk album and the second to garner a large audience. It's more of the same,

all right: old plus new, rock/pop plus hip-hop, expected plus unexpected.

Gillis' technique is even more technically impressive than before: Animals shows even fewer seams

than Night Ripper did,

with Gillis road-testing many of his joins at shows before tightening the screws

for the final result. (Animals was made available recently as a pay-what-you-like

download from IllegalArt.net.)

It's also dizzier than its predecessor. There are

moments where Gillis would be better off letting things ride out a little more,

especially when he finds a particularly inspired pairing, like Busta Rhymes

over Yo La Tengo ("Like This"), Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" over The Guess

Who's "These Eyes" ("Set It Off"), or Blackstreet's "No Diggity" over Kanye

West's "Flashing Lights" ("Still Here"). Still, Gillis' sense of sonic

proportion gives the whole mix a curvaceousness that make even the most

unnatural tandems seem perfectly logical. At the very least, it's a lot more

enjoyable than most of the clips programs on VH-1.