Gorillaz [ECD] [PA] - Gorillaz > Reviews > Oh rats, this album is ace

Author's product rating:   

Originality
Lyrics
Quality and consistency of tracks
How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Value for Money

Advantages:	Fab
Disadvantages:	A few filler tracks .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Yes yes, very clever, Hoxton boys: a cartoon band, the ultimate in post-modern music, indie's answer to the invasion of manufactured boygroups.... a concept that could have been invented for a feature in the Face magazine and one that has duly got all the beardy trendy Soho self-appointed cultural commentators who inhabit the likes of Dazed and Confused magasine very, very excited. The very idea is so wanky that you can just picture a bunch of self important musos dreaming it up after a night on the champagne and charlie down at the Groucho. A band that doesn't exist, that's made up of cartoon parodies of hip urban coolness while simultaneously parodying the idea of a made up band... makes your head hurt just thinking about it (unless you've taken large quantities of coke). Great!, they must have thought. And loads of people will write about it, so we'll get to make loads of money too...

And I can report that the Gorillaz in reality are just as wanky as in concept. A friend of mine went to "interview" them a week or two ago, quite an experience by all accounts.First he was made to sign an agreement that he would only write about the band as if they were real people, making no reference to the fact they were cartoon characters. He would treat the music with similar reverence. He was not allowed to say who the band actually were, or who he was actually meeting. There was, of course, no photo session - instead he was offered exclusive Jamie Hewlett pics (largely the reason why he did the piece at all). He described the whole event afterwards as farcical, the biggest exercise in emperors-new-clothes-ism he'd ever witness.

Except that however much you might want to hate them in principle, Gorillaz have one astonishing trump card, and it goes by the name of Damon Albarn. Now, it is entirely within the spirit of this band that I should write a review of their album that doesn't even mention the tunes until the third paragraph, and I ask those of you who may want to rate me down on that basis to reconsider. But this is an album review, and the tunes are the thing. The entire band is a result of a collaboration between Albarn and genuis cartoonist Jamie Hewlett, creator of Tank Girl and the legendary Hewligan's Haircut (anyone remember that). Jamie does the pics and blatantly, for all the collaborations with other musicians, Damon handles the tunes. His sticky pawprints are all over this album, from the laid-back loops of Slow Country (track 14 and surely a future single) to the overall scuzzy, low-fi feel of Blur's stuff of a few years ago. ANd for my money, it's further proof that for all his ability to disappear up his own arse, he's rapidly developing into one of this country's most interesting and versatile musicians.

Quite how you'd describe the music here, I don't know. It's quite experimental, there are a lot of hip-hop beats, stripped down dance grooves, some ace raps that remind me of nothing more than massive attack (now there's praise) - who actually, now I come to think of it, are kind of a much better version of what's going on here minus the indie sensibility, there's a reggae influence, and with all of this it shoudl be a lot dancier than it is - but the whole thing is governed by such an indie ethic that despite the presence of several dance musicians, the whole thing is yanked firmly back to Blur territory.

I defy anyone to be unmoved by the low slung, funky bassline of Clint Eastwood or the melancholy of 'Tomorrow Comes Today'. For such tunes, the best indie-dance crossover music for several years, I can forgive them all the intitial concept and even the ongoing irritation of forcing everyone to believe that these guys are real. I was inspired to buy this album after hearing Clint Eastwood just once. It's been a very long time since that happened, and I haven't regretted it. It'll be interesting to see if this band has any more of a shelf-life than the boy bands they are parodying, but I suspect not. I think Damon will get bored and move on to something else, and the gorillaz are something that we should enjoy while they last. And apart from anything else, they've finally given Jamie Hewlett the platform he deserves as a cartoonist. So much for it all being about the music.