Review: Gorillaz – “Plastic Beach”
For years, Gorillaz has annoyed me. Not in a “Yuck, turn that shit off!” kind of way, but rather the opposite: I desperately want to love them. You say “Damon Albarn from Blur starts a hip-hop band fronted by cartoons,” and even the prepositions sound awesome. But when it comes to the music itself, I always wind up feeling a little cold; they’re great in small doses like “Feel Good Inc.” and “Clint Eastwood,” but over the course of an album, those moments don’t come often enough. So I get frustrated, wanting so badly to like them, but not really pulling it off and feeling like it’s a failure on my part.
Plastic Beach is their third album, and if they still don’t fulfill the promise of the cartoon hip hop band concept, they certainly reach wildly in enough disparate directions to make it worth a check-out. It starts off with a rocky lurch, though: following the exactly-what-it-promises “Orchestral Intro,” Snoop Dogg guests on “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” which sounds too much like the intro to a Snoop Dogg album. A couple tracks later, though, we arrive at “Rhinestone Eyes,” which shows exactly where this album excels: when Gorillaz play up the electronic party vibe, the album is a jam. That means that the band is still at its best in small doses, but these doses are impossible to resist. The synths are the star here, keeping things strong and funky like some 80s Prince work. Slow down “Stylo” (featuring Bobby Womack and Mos Def) to half-speed, and it could pass for a second cousin to George Clinton, circa-”Atomic Dog.”
It’s not all fun and 80s pastiche, though: the middle moments meander and deaden the momentum a bit. Specifically, whenever the album slows or quiets down, it’s a little less engaging. The opening to “Empire Ants” works as a breather, I guess, but theoretically I’ve only been dancing for 15 minutes at that point. It speeds up, but not enough to rope anyone in. “Broken” feels like a go-nowhere slog on the otherwise pastel textures the album presents. It can’t be said that all the slow moments are bad: “To Binge” is a charming jaunt. Likewise, it’s not just the slow moments that hurt the average, either. ”Glitter Freeze” shrieks and stutters but never really grooves. These are only a couple examples of moments that could use the “beach” in Plastic Beach. These imperfections are relatively minor, though. It’s just that they slow up what is otherwise a good throwback electro album with grooves set to “megasized. ”
Those grooves come with some huge moments, though: “On Melancholy Hill” is more worthy of swaying and smiling than its title might imply. Lou Reed’s guest spot on “Some Kind of Nature” is inspired; his deadpan near-recitation is a perfect fit here. Why has he not worked with more hip-hop artists? Like Albarn, he’s not quite rapping, but the vocalization adds to the synthesizers all over the thing. And I can’t end this review without mentioning “Sweepstakes,” Mos Def’s second guest spot. The song chants “SWEEPSTAKES! You’re a winner!” so many times, it’s entrancing. It’s almost a joke, but then you find yourself knee-deep in a Mos Def verse that’s exactly what the song calls for. It’s a close-to-perfect track, I say. Definitely the best thing here.
So here we have another scattershot collection from a band that probably is best considered as a singles band. This makes them lucky, since, in the age of MP3s, you barely need to know what an album is to get heard. It’s just disappointing that one of the architects behind Blur’s great 90′s albums isn’t quite going front-to-back with great material.
Gorillaz:
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Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!Email this Author | All posts by Jere
Like the review… couldn’t agree more that the best moments didn’t seem to come often enough on earlier discs… I feel like I can listen to this album with realistic expectations now.
The video with Bruce Willis is fucking awesome, for some reason that I can’t figure out quite yet.
Oswald probably didn’t post it cause he has deep feelings of hatred for Bruce Willis leftover from high school.