Girl Talk 
All Day
Illegal Art
November 15
By Jason Cunningham
Girl Talk’s albums have always had a formula. Take one part classic rock song, add the vocals from a popular and most likely dirty hip-hop track, sprinkle in a dash of pop music and suddenly: a song.
All Day, Girl Talk’s latest album, proves that this formula wears thin over time. What succeeds in Unstoppable, Night Ripper and Feed The Animals may come of as boring for some while listening to All Day. While those prior three works have similarities in style, they’re all able to stand alone as scrapbooks of pop culture and musical history. I’ll exclude Secret Diary from the catalog because of its distance in approach from Gregg Gillis’s other works under the Girl Talk name.
The best moments on All Day are when Gillis’ choices sound stripped, but that same lack of complexity makes other sections of the album that could be stronger feel like they’re dragging. Ironically, Gillis describes All Day as his “most complicated” album to date. It does succeed in using more samples than any other Girl Talk album, but it fails to offer the same mind-blowing moments that made Girl Talk’s material worthwhile. That’s not to say that All Day isn’t a ton of fun anyway. His audience will most likely agree. After all, the Nov. 15 free online release of All Day “broke the Internet” according to a few headlines.
All Day, for the most part, sounds more like the honest mashups of common DJs opposed to the detailed layering of Gillis’ past albums. In some ways, All Day falls victim to routine, but when listened to as a single track, which is how Gillis intended for the album to be listened to, the driving idea behind the album long song that has been broken down into 12 tracks makes a lot more sense, putting the longer length of the sample play on some tracks into better context. All Day is intended to play like the ultimate party track, not a DJ’s set.
The music that comprises most Girl Talk albums is all material that Gillis listens to and enjoys. Some standards, Jay-Z and Ludacris for instance, will always pop up in Gillis’s mashups. While some may be turned off by hearing the same artists that Gillis has relied on previously fill up new Girl Talk tracks, we must be aware that this is Gillis’ vision, which has consistently pleased crowds album after album. We also get to hear the dirty pleasures, the catchiest parts of the hits that have consumed the airwaves over the past couple of years. Acts like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry as well as indie rock staples like Phoenix and Arcade Fire all share the stage in Gillis’ epic collision of genres.
Gillis completely understands his audience because he understands his own artistic vision, which is consistent with his own musical taste. While some may not be thrilled with All Day, the album ultimately shows that Gillis is remaining loyal to his direction and his fans. The album is full of danceability and fun for those with the patience for something a little different than Gillis’s previous work.
