Gnarls Barkley's fairly good follow-up

At first, the whirs and whoos and intercom voices coming through the phone made it sound as if Cee-Lo was hunkered down in the studio with Danger Mouse, his mad-scientist partner in the group Gnarls Barkley, during an interview last week.

"I'm at a car dealership," Cee-Lo explained from his hometown of Atlanta. "My car has been sitting for three months, so it needed a little work."

Gnarls Barkley itself had a lot of work to do over the past few months. The duo, which started making music together more or less on a whim, has toured relentlessly as it faced the daunting task of living up to the success of its soulful 2006 mega-hit "Crazy" and the debut album that spawned it, "St. Elsewhere."

Matching that album's 1.5 million in sales was next-to-impossible with their second effort, "The Odd Couple," especially after the record was leaked on the Internet two weeks before its release in March. Charming critics the second time around also seemed like an uphill battle.

So singer Cee-Lo (Thomas Callaway), multi-instrumentalist Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and their band took to the road, where they made a strong case for "The Odd Couple" to fans -- the dedicated ones who weren't there just because they heard "Crazy" on a Top 40 radio station. They played a lot of smaller clubs, and they did so without the outlandish costumes from their first tour (e.g. "Star Wars" outfits or the matching tennis uniforms they wore at First Avenue in 2006).

"I wouldn't want that to become a mockery of itself," Cee-Lo said of the costumes. "We may do it again if we feel like it, but this time around we wanted people to focus on the music and not the spectacle."

He believes the outing was a success.

"It felt good to be able to go back between then and now [on tour] and see the reception and acknowledgement of both records, not just the first one. It allowed us to sort of bear witness to our fans. It felt like the bond with the fans solidified this time around."

Gnarls will continue promoting "The Odd Couple" with a few scattered tour dates through September, including the Austin City Limits Festival in Texas and their curiously booked gig Wednesday at the Minnesota State Fair grandstand.

"We have a pretty diversified portfolio, but I do believe that's a first for us," he said of the fair. "We'll be there with bells on."

It wasn't clear whether that was a joke about the fair's plethora of livestock.

Kings of pain

Songs like "Open Book" and the edgy first single "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)" use Danger Mouse's dense production and Cee-Lo's deep but desperate-sounding vocals like blunt weapons. Probably the freakiest thing from the album is the video for the song "Who's Gonna Save My Soul," wherein a guy who's getting dumped literally tears his heart out and hands it over.

Comparing the two records, Cee-Lo described the new one as "completing the thought."

"More than just trying to do something new, we were trying to do things we didn't get to completely do on the first record," he said. "We went in with a lot more self-awareness and certainty. This time, we knew what we were doing."

With more confidence and cohesion behind him, Cee-Lo was able to go further out on a limb in the songwriting. Most of the tracks were stream-of-consciousness creations, he said, and are more personal than before.

"My blood, sweat and tears, it's all in there," he said. "It's not something that's very introspective. It's usually a reenactment of whatever experience I'm addressing. It's something I survived or something that rings true to me as a common experience. It's never so personal [that] it can't pertain to someone else's life. If it's about pain, ultimately pain is pain to everyone."

Cee-Lo claimed Gnarls never felt any pressure to deliver another big hit like "Crazy."

"That was unconscionable to do. We didn't even try. I think people would've been disappointed if we had. People might initially miss that there's not a big hit record on there like 'Crazy,' but if there was any failed attempt at that magnitude of a song again, it would've spoiled an otherwise solid album."

Still, unlike a lot of performers who score major hits and then try to get out from under them, the Gnarls dudes aren't going around acting like the success of 'Crazy' was a hassle or a hurdle.

"I was so used to moderacy over my 15-year career, so it was surprising," Cee-Lo said. "But at the same time, I was poised for it by that point. I did feel like it was well-earned and deserved, and instead of causing me to be frantic or panicked, I could be more like steel and just bask in the moment of it."

One of the most gratifying things about the song, he added, was hearing so many other artists cover it. A completely random sampling of the acts who went "Crazy": Nelly Furtado, the Raconteurs, Ray LaMontagne, the Kooks, Shawn Colvin, Charlotte Church, the Twilight Singers and Cat Power. Oh, and Billy Idol, whom Cee-Lo singled out.

Once touring winds down, Danger Mouse will probably produce a few more records for other artists (he worked on this year's Beck and Black Keys discs). Cee-Lo said he has been working on another solo record (he put out two before Gnarls), but his first order of business will be a reunion album by his old group, Goodie Mob, OutKast's psychedelic/soulful hip-hop peers.

There will almost certainly be another Gnarls record, too. Playing off the first two album titles, both of which were old TV series, Cee-Lo quipped, "We're thinking of calling the next one 'Fish.'"

Whether or not anybody gets the joke, Abe Vigoda would no doubt be proud.