The “cartoon band” formed by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn has become a reference after twenty-five years and eight albums. As The Mountain arrives, we dive into our archives to reevaluate what we thought of these records at their initial releases.
Gorillaz (2001)
An electrified punk with a whiff of danger, named Murdoc and hailing from the backwater of Stoke-on-Trent, supposedly coerced his scapegoat 2D, a shy vocalist, then Russel, a burly American drummer, and Noodle, a Japanese guitarist with ringworms. Together they allegedly set the music industry ablaze with a single concert, in keeping with the myths and legends of recent British lore, in a Camden pub.
Thus began Gorillaz’ official story, a collective quickly bolstered by the planet’s most VIP fan club: Damon Albarn of Blur lends his voice to a slew of songs, supported by an impressive roster of collaborators: the legendary Dan “The Automator” Nakamura on twisted production, Jamie Hewlett (the Tank Girl cartoonist) behind the sublime visuals, but also Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads), Miho Hatori (Cibo Matto), Del The Funky Homosapien (Deltron 3030, Hieroglyphics), who joined the voyage, and even the venerable Cuban Ibrahim Ferrer, pleasantly out of place in this project.
“Why can’t an album move from pop to dub and from punk to hip-hop?” Albarn recalled at the time. A clarifying statement, because the truth hits you loudly: you stop playing. Despite its dream team, Gorillaz is truly Damon Albarn’s solo album. An album liberated from Blur’s stifling framework and from a schedule rendered as relentless as it is exhausting by the music industry. An industry that Gorillaz would revolutionize. L. N.
Demon Days (2005)
Gorillaz’ chapter two opens with the same infectious energy as its predecessor, as evidenced by the irresistible lead single Feel Good Inc. featuring De La Soul. After this storm, the record reveals itself as somewhat deeper, more thoroughly explored thematically and compositionally than the first, which rested on a triumvirate of atomic singles.
The canonical formula for this new Gorillaz, with Danger Mouse in the seat previously occupied by Dan the Automator, rests on the friction between the unrestrained songwriting of the Fab Four of 1968, the audacity of the Super Ape album by the Upsetters in 1976, and the revitalizing hip-hop of Sugar Hill Records. On the future global hit Dirty Harry (after Clint Eastwood, you follow?), one might hear, behind a Grandmaster Flash-like gimmick, the echo of Africa remade in New York by Brian Eno and Talking Heads. To such an extent that Demon Days seems less a sequel to Gorillaz than a natural extension of Blur’s Think Tank (2003).
An array of stirring guests takes on MC duties, including Roots Manuva, Shaun Ryder, Neneh Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, and the ultra-cool Dennis Hopper in the tailored role of the narrator of Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head. Yet Albarn seems to have poured every inch of his energy into this record to push the most advanced fusion experiments between his parallel lives as pop icon and trailblazer, as an island-bound songwriter and a nomad sensor, as a guardian of traditionalism and a relentless futurist. The assemblage finally crafts a flattering portrait of the expansive talent of its devilish creator. C. C.
The Fall (2010)
conceived in a month on the road, with each track dating its origin, The Fall is a conceptual album. A true touring record, the musical documentary of a mind that seems to be running out of steam, of a man weary of playing the fool at every corner of the globe. Little fanfare on The Fall. Few or no stellar guests — Mick Jones or Paul Simonon appear on a track each, Bobby Womack sings on the twisted Bobby in Phoenix. The album’s iPad-based creation imposed a minimalist approach that suits Albarn rather well.
From this fascinating counterpoint to the recent Plastic Beach only two “real” songs stand out: the sublime Amarillo and California and the Slipping of the Sun and their distant reflections of Sabali. Elsewhere, the electronics are harsh and ghostly (Little Plastic Bags), the groove is woozy (Phoner to Arizona, Hillbilly Man), and the synths make you dance like languid seaweed (Detroit, Aspen Forest).
Strangely brave, The Fall lives up to its name: it is the slow descent into the boredom of endless tours, the dreary waits in vast empty venues, soundchecks on autopilot, and it sets to music the grim mornings after nights of forced smiles. T. B.
Plastic Beach (2010)
At the turn of the millennium, a tired Damon Albarn, weary of spending the previous decade occupying the covers of English weekly music magazines with Blur, conceived the Gorillaz cartoon pop with his fellow cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. A quartet of virtual characters, perfect for carrying the Englishman’s compositions and restoring his lost anonymity — a concept truly unheard of in a culture of entertainment increasingly founded on image and embodiment. Yet what began as a side project and a bit of fun sold more than fifteen million copies of the Gorillaz and Demon Days albums worldwide.
The third installment in the saga, Plastic Beach lets Damon Albarn continue to pull our leg. Marketed as the most pop-oriented album to date, it is in fact the band’s least accessible record, less focused on hooks and heavily influenced by hip-hop. Dark, sinuous and twisted, Plastic Beach is nonetheless hypnotic. With an extraordinary cast (Lou Reed, Snoop Dogg, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash), the album comes with a quirky story: after the destruction of Kong Studios, the album was recorded on a landfill island abandoned by humans. Welcome to Gorillaz’s (new) plastic world. J. S.
Humanz (2017)
With Humanz, a fifth album much more open sonically, Albarn and Hewlett present a narrative effort inevitably colored by the political climate of the time. “It all started with a nightmare,” Jamie Hewlett summarized. “When we wrapped the cast for the new record, we asked everyone to imagine a world where Donald Trump would be the President. The premise was simple: we throw a big party and wake up the next day realizing it was just a terrible nightmare.” Sadly, reality caught up with fiction.
To set this unsettling sermon to music, Damon Albarn journeyed from Chicago to Jamaica to work with artists as diverse as Peven Everett (Strobelite) and Popcaan (Saturnz Barz). While reinforced by legends like Grace Jones, De La Soul, Mavis Staples or Jean-Michel Jarre, Humanz speaks directly to the youth, voiced by Popcaan, Kelela, Danny Brown or Kali Uchis and, in a perilous context, closes nevertheless with a hymn to love and peace, We Got the Power, shared with Jehnny Beth and Noel Gallagher — breaking down the Britpop wall that once separated Blur from Oasis. Awaiting what the future will hold. A. F.
The Now Now (2018)
While Gorillaz had become known for a plethora of collaborators on earlier records, this time the guest list is lean. There is still the great George Benson on the opening track Humility and, on Hollywood, the house legend Jamie Principle and the weed- and rap-leaning Snoop Dogg. But when you listen closely to The Now Now, you can’t help but think of a fluffy crossing through Trump-era America. Among brighter moments (the very Buggles-esque Tranz, the infectiously groovy Sorcererz, the brilliant Humility), some tracks offer fairly precise anchors: Hollywood, of course, but also Kansas with its shifting beat, Idaho, and the plaintive instrumental Lake Zurich, which evokes an Illinois sometimes as unsettled as the lines sung by Sufjan Stevens.
The closing tracks, not always easy to place on a map of Uncle Sam (Magic City, Fire Flies, One Percent, Souk Eye), lean more toward a curious acid-fueled ride in Death Valley than any Spring Break. In short, a rather brilliant record, of striking visual and inner beauty, signed by the most gifted Englishman of his generation. P. S.
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez (2020)
A formidable machine for attracting all the big names in the musical world — what other contemporary band can boast Lou Reed and Grace Jones, Mark E. Smith and De La Soul, George Benson and Jehnny Beth, Robert Smith and Fatoumata Diawara, Snoop Dogg and Bobby Womack, Neneh Cherry and Mos Def in its discography? — Gorillaz reconvenes after The Now Now, a deliberately introspective record focused on the voice of 2D, Damon Albarn’s animated alter ego, and likely the best year since the masterwork Demon Days.
Created between Paris, London, Como and Morocco by 2D (vocals), Noodle (guitar), Murdoc Niccals (bass) and Russell Hobbs (drums), this album breathes new life into the Gorillaz universe — as heard on the snappy and discoid Chalk Tablet Towers, featuring the brilliant St. Vincent, or on the unlikely pairing of Damon Albarn, Elton John and rapper 6lack, bound for global charts behind a melody that sounds syrupy-sweet and irresistibly addictive in its languor (The Pink Phantom, or the epitome of guilty pleasure). Nineteen years after a debut LP that found Gorillaz cruising on a camouflage Jeep, the brilliantly playful group led by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett remains unstoppable. F. V.
Cracker Island (2023)
Leading the charge with a roster that includes Beck, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, and Thundercat (the unmistakable bassline on the opening track), it is Damon Albarn who radiates on Cracker Island and strengthens his place in the pantheon of the most affecting voices in the history of music.
From New Gold, which calls back to the original Gorillaz, to the blistering single Cracker Island, and through the sublime Possession Island, with Beck recalling Everyday Robots, it is ultimately in the diptych formed by the ambivalent Skinny Ape and the irresistible Caribbean-flavored Tormenta (shared with the current world’s biggest star, Bad Bunny) that Gorillaz still nests. A curiosity whose horizon remains undefined, a pleasure always recreational — but never regressive — with no limits to blend past and present pop, and to reshape it. T. D.
