Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
I know this record’s been out for over a month, but in that time I’ve found myself talking it up more than most other recent albums (plus the new MGMT drops this week and I won’t be lured into writing hundreds of words about how confoundingly mediocre that band is). Gorillaz get a lot of credit for having the element of surprise on their side this time. I had always pegged them as a fairly interesting but ultimately disposable singles band. There was “Clint Eastwood,” “19-2000,” “Feel Good Inc,” and “Dirty Harry,” but not really much else. Until Plastic Beach, you could count the number of great Gorillaz songs on one hand. Now, though, it’s a new and improved story.
Speaking of stories, we should probably address the elephant in the room of every Gorillaz review: those damn cartoons. Remember how the band started out as this fictitious quartet of ultra-modern, ultra-detached characters whose names I’ve completely forgotten? The drummer was possessed by a rapping genie, the guitarist didn’t speak English until the second record, the bassist was kind of evil, and the singer was just an empty shell for projecting Damon Albarn’s most robotic choruses. In many ways, the character-driven part of Gorillaz has gone out the window—Plastic Beach wasn’t even originally supposed to be a Gorillaz album. Look up at that nifty cover art. Do you see the four ‘band members’ prominently displayed anywhere, like on their first
Plastic Beach begins with ocean sounds and gorgeous filmic string arrangements courtesy of Sinfonia Viva. It’s an out-of-left-field into, but it also sets the mood precisely with a mix of naturalism and wide-eyed melancholy. “Rhinestone Eyes” has an upbeat bounce similar to Demon Days’ “Dare,” but it makes far more incisive use of Albarn’s downcast, singsongy rap schtick. “Nature’s corrupted in factories far away,” he mumbles, for the first time giving his mournful tone something concrete to mourn. Lou Reed (!) turns up to apply his now-gravelly croon expertly to the same tactic on “Some Kind of Nature,” while The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon pop up on the vocoder-shredded title track. Gruff Rhys does his best Albarn impression with the ever-building harmonies on the chorus of “Superfast Jellyfish,” more than making up for the mostly goofy verses from De La Soul. “On Melancholy Hill” and “Broken” form a powerful one-two punch on the record’s second half. “Hill”s synth-orchestra riff and sighing harmonies congeal into a wistful anthem, followed by the bristling squelches of “Broken,” in which Albarn renders the emptiness of consumer culture personal by pointing to “the light of the plasma screens / we keep switched on / all through the night while we sleep.”
Even if none of those songs worked as grandly as they do, we’d still have our two requisite standouts in “Empire Ants” and first single “Stylo.” The latter speeds along on an ominous electro-funk beat, with Albarn’s surprisingly poignant soul (maybe a bit disco?) verses playing off Bobby Womack’s forceful choruses and Mos Def’s cool, hollow interjections. There’s a palpable sense of tension here that’s absent from some of Plastic Beach’s more wounded, atmospheric tracks, which makes “Stylo” all the more singularly compelling. For my money, though, “Empire Ants” stands as the album’s most gripping, dramatic, and beautiful moment. A collaboration with Japanese/Swedish synth poppers Little Dragon, “Ants” is a song in two phases. The first half is extremely spare, with a drum machine gurgling in the background as reverberating guitar and keys create a picturesque space for Albarn to try to comfort himself with Zombies-style harmonies. It’s plaintive and dolorous on its own, but the whole song gets suddenly swallowed up and transformed at the half way mark by Little Dragon, who resurrect the “Stylo” strut but with a descending synthesizer lead that somehow sounds even more arrestingly poignant than Albarn’s doldrums. Yukimi Nagano then puts the icing on the cake, her clear, crisp voice navigating melody and sorrowful inflection flawlessly. The transition between the two sections at the song’s middle is a huge goosebump moment, but “Ants” is made all the more powerful by the fact that, when they do hit that groove, you feel like it could go on ten times longer than it does.
Before I get carried away, let’s remember that some things never change. This is still a Gorillaz record: songwriting quality isn’t evenly distributed, the pacing occasionally feels jumbled, and there are still a few head-scratching moments (Snoop Dogg…?). But for the first time in the band’s history, those non-sequiturs are the exception instead of the rule. With Plastic Beach, not only have Albarn & co. forged a brilliant new path for their waning project, but they’ve crafted one of the year’s most genuinely affecting pop albums.
