Review: Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

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Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Released: 08/03/2010
Labal: Parlophone

It must to be hard to be a Gorillaz fan. First of all, your heroes are nothing but creations born from the pen of cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. Secondly, they hardly have a reputation for being the fastest of producers of albums. In their defence, the results have always justified the means – Albarn and his loyal band of cartoon façades constantly push musical boundaries with success after success. With their latest effort, Plastic Beach, Gorillaz needed to give themselves the time to let the project blossom. It would have been hypocritical had they not, for this imaginary and deeply allegorical Plastic Beach is where the detritus of disposable culture gets washed up. Gorillaz are setting themselves above, and well apart from, the faddishness of the mainstream, and it is these ideals that comprise the river that runs through the heart of Plastic Beach.

It begins with a charming orchestral piece, provided by Sinfonia Viva, before succumbing to Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach, with its infectious 80s-throwback beat, heavy bass, layer-upon-layer of synthesiser and vocoder with Snoop Dogg delivering semi-apocalyptic rhymes, “I know it seems like the world is so hopeless.” Yet, through White Flag and Rhinestone Eyes, while both well crafted songs in their own right, Gorillaz subtly hint that there are still greater heights to follow.

And they do follow. Lead single Stylo is driven along by a stylish electro-bass groove, with a majestic vocal performance offered by Bobby Womack. It is, without a doubt, the most infectious combination of bassline and thudding rhythm that Albarn has written for an age, and Mos Def’s tight verse near the track’s conclusion is the proverbial icing on the stunning cake.

Yet, in among the memorable rhythms, Plastic Beach contains moments of beauty. Empire Ants begins a gentle acoustic ballad about escapism from the pressures of society, not a million miles away from Beck during one of his tender moments, before the acoustic bones are fleshed out with waves of electronica. Arpeggiated chords dance over the trudging bass, and in the brief instant when you feel as if nothing had ever sounded so poignant, in that instant you wish for deafness so that this will be the last thing you will have ever heard, the beautifully naïve vocals of Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano enter. Never have you felt so foolish for willing on deafness.

Plastic Beach is a fabulous piece of work. Relying heavily upon collaborators from a variety of backgrounds, there was a great risk of the album sounding like a collection of separate tracks, rather than a flowing piece of art. Albarn has proven that he is one of this generation’s best songwriters with this album; it seems almost shameful to think that we once compared the genius behind Gorillaz and Blur to 3-chord ‘superstars’ Oasis. Whereas Oasis have retired to take their place within the annals of history, Albarn just keeps on getting better and better.

Alex Britton

Tags: damon albarn, gorillaz, jamie hewlett, parlophone, plastic beach