Gorillaz bore again

NOTE: This is one of the worst takes on an album I think I've ever had. I clearly went into Plastic Beach looking for Demon Days 2 or for Blur's Think Tank 2. This record is now one of my all-time favorites. I just needed time to catch up with Damon Albarn.

Listening to the Gorillaz, the fake (or cartoon) band of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewitt, is fraught with conflict for me.

On one hand, I'm a huge fan of Blur, the Brit Pop juggernaut of which Albarn was the frontman through the '90s (and more recently for the band's one-and-done reunion last year). I also really enjoyed Albarn's The Good, The Bad and the Queen.

On the other hand, I haven't heard more than three or four hip hop albums that I've liked in the last 15 years.1 The pacing, subject matter and composition of hip hop has fallen a long way since its peak in the late 80s and early 90s. To my ears, it's hard to imagine how the music could get any worse.

So for me, the Gorillaz' new album Plastic Beach, which dabbles a great deal in hip hop, the experience is disorienting. And ultimately dull.

There's a lot worth trying to like on the Gorillaz. There's a leitmotif of experimentation that brings the Clash's Sandinista! to mind (in fact, Albarn's collaborator on The Good, The Bad and The Queen, Paul Simonon of the Clash is on this record, too).

The record's themes are also admirable. There's an undercurrent of modern angst and the perils of our disposable culture here that are current. Albarn has always worked in keen, Kinks-like social criticism dating back to Blur's earliest work. There are sound ideas behind these songs, both in composition and lyrics.

But the guest spots suggest a diversity that's really not at work here. All the songs chug along with various degrees of keys and other electronic beep and blips. The sum total sounds like Albarn at work on Garage Band. It's a thin, phony sound -- as flat and undynamic as anything I've heard recently. At it's best, the various guest vocalists are disorienting, lending the record a disjointed feel, or worse yet, the feel of a soundtrack or compilation.

For Albarn, who worked with one of the best rock and pop bands in contemporary memory, it's hard not to be disappointed in that thinness. For most American listeners, who have only heard Blur's "Song 2," a grunge parody that is as far from representative of the band's work as any single song could be, this means very little.2 But I can't help feeling like there's something missing while listening to the Gorillaz -- even in songs like "Melancholy Hill," "Plastic Beach" and "Empire Ants" that put Albarn up front (he sings without help from De La Soul or Mos Def).

No matter what, this just ain't nearly as good as Blur.

It might be unfair of me to hold Gorillaz to this standard. And perhaps there's a modernity here that I am just unable to appreciate.3 But I don't think this lives up to Albarn's great talents. It's a piece of disposable pop, as plastic as the culture he decries on the album's title track.

Footnotes:

1. Outkast's Stankonia and The Love Below, Common's Like Water for Chocolate and The Roots' Phrenology.

2. Though the British music press, where Albarn has been a genuine pop star for 20 years, has fawned over this new album, with most of the big music magazines giving it the highest praise available. Maybe they've gotten over Blur, something I can't seem to do.

3. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the similarly electronic-drenched work of fellow brit group Hot Chip. Hot Chip sounds vital to me. Full of ideas and possibilities. I don't hear that on Plastic Beach.