Gnarls Barkley are going back out. CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse have booked the To Whom It Still Concerns Tour for November, nine dates that amount to their first road work in 18 years, and the last one they have said they intend to do together.
Green put the framing in a statement. The tour operates like an open book, he said, exploring the universal matters of life, death and everything in between. "These songs are the silver lining to an otherwise sad story," he added, inviting people to come and celebrate the beautiful madness of it.
The record behind it is Atlanta, released in March and reported to be the duo's third and final album. It was their first since The Odd Couple in 2008, which means the gap between records and the gap between tours were almost exactly the same length.
That hiatus has a precise end point. Gnarls Barkley last played live on 28 September 2008 at Austin City Limits, and nothing followed it for 18 years.
The routing is small rooms rather than arenas. It opens on 5 November at The Masonic in San Francisco, then The Wiltern in Los Angeles on 7 November, and the homecoming at the Coca-Cola Roxy in Atlanta on 10 November. After that comes The Fillmore Detroit on the 13th, Citizens House of Blues in Boston on the 15th, The Fillmore Silver Spring on the 19th, HISTORY in Toronto on the 22nd, Irving Plaza in New York on the 24th, and House of Blues Chicago on the 28th. The dates are in the tour guide.
For a pairing whose profile still rests almost entirely on one 2006 single, playing 1,000 to 3,000-capacity rooms is a deliberate scale. This autumn has been full of long-dormant acts testing whether an audience is still there, including the Pussycat Dolls lining up their first show in Brazil. Gnarls Barkley sit across R&B and soul, hip-hop and pop, which is part of why they were hard to place in 2006 and part of why the records lasted.
The facts
- Gnarls Barkley have announced the To Whom It Still Concerns Tour.
- The nine-date run opens 5 November in San Francisco and ends 28 November in Chicago.
- It is their first tour in 18 years.
- They last played live on 28 September 2008 at Austin City Limits.
- The tour supports Atlanta, the duo's third and reportedly final album.
- Atlanta arrived in March, 18 years after 2008's The Odd Couple.
- The Atlanta date is 10 November at the Coca-Cola Roxy.
- CeeLo Green says the songs are a silver lining to a sad story.
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