Girl Talk- All Day

Yesterday, with little fanfare, Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis dropped his new album of pop pastiche online for free. Based on his last few offerings, I was prepared to love everything I thought I hated. (With the possible exception of “Rude Boy.”) What All Day proves, however, is that his trademark cut-and-pastes grow thin if he does nothing to reinvigorate his formula.

With each previous album, he made a noticeable improvement to his style. Between Unstoppable and Night Ripper (my favorite album of 2006, by the way), he let selections ride out, testing how long he could sustain a sample rather than making as many micro-edits as possible. Between Night Ripper and Feed the Animals, he strengthened transitions and resisted pairings that were too-clever-for-their-own-good. But with All Day, it just feels as if it was time for him to make another record.

There is no creative leap forward, and, in fact—especially if you have a foot in the mash-up/bootleg world—some of the samples are tired. Anyone who has listened to mash-ups has probably heard “Imagine” or “I Want You Back” instrumentals a million times. Because of the breakneck pace of his earlier albums, which sample literally hundreds of songs, he might even be running out of source material to adapt. There are only so many acapella torrents on The Pirate Bay, and Gillis has the same ones as everyone else: “I guess I haven’t used Skee-Lo yet.”

That being said, this is still an irresistibly fun album to listen to. Gillis would probably tell you himself that he’s not the best beat-matcher, editor, or crate-digger. (Good call on New Orleans bounce classic “Get It Ready, Ready” by DJ Jubilee, however.) Instead, what makes him so popular at what he does is one simple thing that no one mentions: He knows the songs that people like, and he plays the best parts of those songs. If you have ever heard The Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein,” you remember the drum solo. If you have ever heard Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” you will recognize the part with the castanets. So those are the parts he samples. Why cut up “Ante Up” if you don’t include the “I’m nine hundred ninety-nine thou short of a mil” line? In short, Gillis realizes that we don’t like that Pitbull verse despite the fact that he compares his ejaculate to egg whites: We like it because of that fact.

While it’s a step down for him, All Day is still so fast and diverting that it’s difficult to dislike. The more I listen, the more I find tiny moments that delight me; and the giddy enthusiasm Girl Talk has for all of this music bleeds through each track. Plus, he found a way to get me to like “Rude Boy” after all. The secret is putting Fugazi underneath.

Favorite juxtapositions:
1. B.O.B.- “Haterz Everywhere” over Derek & The Dominoes- “Layla”
2. Wiz Khalifa- “Black and Yellow” over Rolling Stones- “Paint It Black”
3. Jay-Z- “Can I Get a…” over General Public- “Tenderness”
4. Basement Jaxx- “Where Your Head at” over Rick Ross- “B.M.F.”
5. Terror Squad- “Lean Back” over Spacehog- “In the Meantime”
6. Young Dro- “Freeze Me” over Cyndi Lauper- “Time After Time”
7. Dorrough- “Ice Cream Paint Job” over The Brothers Johnson- “Strawberry Letter 23”
8. Ol’ Dirty Bastard- “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” over Radiohead- “Creep”
9. Trick Daddy- “Pull Over” over New Order- “Bizarre Love Triangle”
10. Soulja Boy- “Pretty Boy Swag” over Aphex Twin- “Windowlicker”