gorillaz - demon days
at last we come to the beast that is the new gorillaz album.
to start things off i should come clean :
i loved the first album. i loved the dub remix album. i loved the b-sides album.
i listened to all that stuff forever and a day throughout the summers of 2001 and 2002 and smiled and rejoiced in the sheer dance pop fun. i never bought a single blur record through all that time, but i bought anything which had artwork by jamie hewlett on it and featured music by a bunch of pencil/computer creations, insanity was a very close thing at times, but there was something about the dayglo pop hip hop grooves and weirdness that made everything a lot more interesting.
after all, giant mooses are always going to win me over.
now fast foward to 2005, and things are very different. for one thing the album is basically damon solo with danger mouse on production. yes there are plenty of the well publicised cameos, but even so the majority of this album is damon singing in his natural voice, over the spacious, electro tinged dubbed up weird loops controlled and manipulated by the man who emi tried to shut down following his grey album experiment, and, who is now in the position whereby he is hopefully going to stop the company falling into more profit warning situations... hmm.
file those 'cease and desist' letters next to your forthcoming platinum discs do you, surely there's a basis for a conspiracy theory in there somewhere?
good job the mouse man has done such a cracking job. though a word of warning, the album takes a while to get under your skin. this is mainly due to the schizophrenic nature of the songs. the first 4 tracks are like a set of well polished demo's that would have easily sat alongside the g-sides tracks with little in the way of the zombie hip hop sound, instead we get the dark and cold 'last living souls', the down beat and sombre 'kids with guns', and the spaghetti western backing on 'o green world'. then the album shifts a gear with the choir and twitchy classical samples, electro funk of 'dirty harry', the moody but uplifting 'feel good inc' 2 tracks which have been blasted all around the internet, and at last bring in the first of the hip hop collaborations, giving the listener a one way street to the second section, where the album gets a little more pumped up and direct, before we arrive at the disco funk of the album highlight 'dare' (check the website and find where they have placed shaun ryders vocal snippets !). a huge hit beckons in this 4 minutes of updated baggy fun, lets hope shaun is ready for another dose of pop stardom.
throughout the 15 tracks, highlights come thick and fast, proving that the mix of the pop nous damon and cutting edge of the underground danger mouse is a well matched partnership. danger mouse has done an excellent job in taking damon's simple acoustic guitar songs and crafting a whole new sound around the skull-n-cross bones songs. for damon this side project has released him from the confines of the 'other band' to play with lyrics, emotions and styles that would probably be laughed out of the studio normally. but as its a cartoon front person, and not damon then i guess the man has decided to do what the hell he wants - which given that the first album sold 6 million copies is a very viable option, both commercially and artistically. i mean, check out the albums grand finale trilogy with the Denis hopper narration 'fire coming out of the monkeys head'/dont get lost in heaven/demon days which then adds more children choiral sections like some mad demented phil spector/brian wilson production, and you begin to realise that they (damon and dm) have had a blast taking the whole concept as far as they can - yet still keeping their eyes on the strength of the songs. very clever yet still very very enjoyable.
yes on paper - this all sounds like some seriously excessive pop star folly, but i can assure you that in a few months time, this album will be being spun by the pop kids, the college cool crowd, the hipsters and the hip hop fans - all of whom will be smiling and feeling the excellence embedded within. in a strange twist, the fifteen tracks manages to transcend genre barriers and remain totally at ease with itself, in the marriage of song and beats, and in the process making for a complete whole of an album as opposed to a set of songs linked by some cool pictures.
one of the best albums of the year ?
too damn right.
other stuff :
feel good inc - the b-sides