Girl Talk

"Feed the Animals"

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Illegal Art

Gregg Gillis will never make a bad album. That said, the man behind the Girl Talk moniker will never make a great album. It's just the nature in the world of mash-ups, and probably part of the reason Gillis is making the album available in the name-your-own price format on the Illegal Art website. It's not completely original work, but it's still worth a lot, and it also doesn't mean the man can't throw down some ballsy party bangers that trump just about any singular artist's original dance record out today.

Feed the Animals isn't quite Night Ripper 2.0, but if you've been to a Girl Talk live show in the past six months, most of the mashes aren't too new. Gillis noted that he wanted to make the album more cohesive, not using quite as many samples and cuts on this album, rather sticking to longer samples. This is partly accomplished here, with a fair number of tracks drawing on 30-second portions of more popular tracks or hip-hop verses. But that same rapid-fire mentality still exists in the background of even the longer samples, creating the ultimate party ecstasy we've been used to all along.

The same, semi-ironic lyrical juxtapositions in female vs. male dynamics are here (Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" against Too Short's lyrics of "I was gettin' some head, gettin' gettin' some head" on opener "Play Your Part (Pt. 1)), along with the mixes of our parents' favorite tracks against hip-hop staples (Webbie against The Band on "Still Here"). From Radiohead going against Jay-Z ("Set it Off") to Public Enemy with, yes, Len ("No Pause"), Gillis is still the party music master, and Feed the Animals shows that Gillis still has a lot of tricks up in his laptop. It's that touch of irony that Gillis really capitalizes on and what often is able to draw in both the indie and mainstream crowds.

The only problem with trying to be a bit too ironic is that sometimes the combinations just sound silly and rushed. The combination of M.I.A.'s "Boyz" and The Cranberries's "Dreams" on "Let Me See You" could go together in sonic principle, but the tracks don't quite mesh in the smoother manner of his other samples. And the ironic bit can be a little much when Gillis tries to use something like Phil Collins, Wilson Pickett or Ace of Base. It's good for a rare glimpse, but some of the inclusions are just Gillis trying a bit too hard to impress.

A nod to the indie crowd, Girl Talk's albums have always been a sort of indie take on Where's Waldo. Part of the fun for hipsters was to run through the album and pick out which indie tracks from their favorite obscure bands Mr. Gillis had thrown into the equation against something like T.I. or Ludacris. That element is still here - Peter Bjorn and John, Yo La Tengo, Beck, Air and many others slipping into a number of spots - but not quite as prevalent as on Night Ripper.

But all this is just nit-picking on an album that still throbs in an unprecedented, undated party anthem way. Feed the Animals is still the perfect album for any house party, with a strong enough mixture of tracks to appeal to just about anyone (He mixes Soulja Boy and Thin Lizzy, and makes it too addictive for words!). It's nearly impossible to compare to Night Ripper, but to say that it's no better and certainly no worse is still saying an awful lot in terms of partyability.