Notofu.com: Gorillaz
Published by: Notofu.com
Date: March 16, 2010
Format: Web (www.notofu.com)
Type: Music Review
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
It’s almost surprising that Gorillaz became more than just a quickly forgotten gimmick. Really, a 2-D band of cartoon characters sounds, on the surface, like nothing more than a much too clever and dedicated joke, yet the music that has accompanied these images wasn’t all clichéd or gimmicky, and could (usually) stand on its own without its visual companions. Twelve years after the project’s formation and millions of records sold, Gorillaz is back with its third studio effort, and the music is even stronger and more separate from the cartoon companions than ever. While Plastic Beach may still feature these characters in its videos, it finally feels like the music is truly at the forefront of the project.
While the core of Gorillaz are and have been Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, the band has become one of collaborations and Plastic Beach has a lot of them, featuring Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack and Lou Reed, among others. Those “others,” though, are part of what makes Plastic Beach a more intriguing album than the previous two. “White Flag” features the Lebanese Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music contributing lively and unexpected bookends to the track that moves quickly with light strings, percussion and wind instruments. The middle is a harsh contrast of mostly synthesized beats and sounds while Kano and Bashy trade back and forth vocals before the music transitions back into a mixture of the orchestra and the electronic beats. While the drastic changes are a bit jarring at first, after a couple of listens, it makes sense and it flows in a way that feels completely natural.
Later in the record, with “Sweepstakes,” Gorillaz returns to the concept of combining live instruments with synthesized ones. Mos Def’s vocals carry the song while almost everything underneath his voice is constantly changing for the entire five minutes, at one point, featuring Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, which essentially begins replacing the computer generated sounds from earlier in the song with brass instrumentation.
On Plastic Beach, Gorillaz demonstrates its ability to write successful pop songs in a number of different ways. The arrangements range in dynamic and touch on notes of being lively (“Glitter Freeze”), soft-spoken (“To Binge”) and playful (“Superfast Jellyfish”) and the changes are never unwelcome or distracting. The guest MCs along with Albarn’s unmistakable vocals and the signature style of blended music that Gorillaz have created and since owned makes Plastic Beach a Gorillaz record through and through, but the music has evolved in these twelve years. Even if it was a joke or a gimmick at first, those days are long past and Gorillaz are now in the business of writing music that is able to stand on it’s own, away from all of the cartoons even though I have a feeling that those won’t be going anywhere any time soon.
4/5