Gorillaz

Album Reviews:

2010: Plastic Beach

Compilation Reviews:

2001: G Sides

Plastic Beach

It’s automated computer speech

When the amazing Gorillaz-project stranded on their plastic beach (is this about the CD-era? Is the next album going to be Cloud Atlas?), little of the flotsam washed ashore: Albarn as a conférencier for every contemporary music style, ending up with an indistinct mush of slick downtempo, synth ambient, lackluster hip hop and Albarn’s falsetto crooning mediocre pop melodies over many a programmed beat.

As if to make up for the vaccum, the album is chock-full with collaborations and guest appearances. Even Lou Reed himself can’t save the one-dimensional ditty „Some Kind of Nature“ (which is a rehash of his „Some Kinda Love”). Besides a few funny hip hop interjections, the album sounds almost weary – really tired. And if there is something like a pop melody not immediately trivial, it’s directly quoted from – that’s right – the Beatles (compare „And Your Bird Can Sing“ with „On Melancholy Hill“ – it even includes a lyrical quote, to give it the touch of a homage). I just don’t know, this gives electronic music and slick pop an insipid name. If I want this kind of message with more musical ambition, I listen to the Songs of the Humpback Whale.

G Sides

Some of us will never sleep again

Gathering B-sides from three singles and one EP from the era of their first album Gorillaz (March 2001), G Sides (December 2001) doesn’t quite know whether it wants to present itself as a proper clean-up collection (nine months after their debut?) or a sort of belated bonus-CD. The tendency for remixes lets them stretch out into club and dance styles. These means: more hip hop, more alternative dance, more dub, overall simplifying the dizzying genre-mélange of the album.

The “Clint Eastwood” remix with a new rap flows well, the relaxed dub of “Dracula” could have been a minor album highlight. Each track rather settles into one genre instead of exploring a variety. Although fusion is what makes this band great and what made their debut pertinent, this works well for B-sides. Yet consumed as a record, there is not enough substance here: Some of the tracks are so self-sufficiently worked over, they tend to sound like not quite finished demo tracks for another coming album again: Laidback guitar loops and some programmed beat varying between trip hop, dub and the occasional rockier approach. As a clean-up compilation, it serves its purpose quite well, and the longer I have it, the more I like it as a collection.

1, 8, 9: 19/2000 (2001 single)
2, 6: Clint Eastwood (2001 single)
3, 4, 5, 7: Rock the House (2001 single)
10: Tomorrow Comes Today (2000 EP)

Plastic Beach

G Sides

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