Gorillaz - Plastic Beach Review

Posted by David Hayter on 03.09.2010

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett return with their cartoon pals and promise to turn pop music on its head. Is Plastic Beach the next evolution is pop music or the moment when the music world finally passes Damon Albarn by?



Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

1. "Orchestral Intro" (featuring sinfonia ViVA) 1:09
2. "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach" (featuring Snoop Dogg and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble) 3:35
3. "White Flag" (featuring Bashy, Kano, and The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music) 3:43
4. "Rhinestone Eyes" 3:20
5. "Stylo" (featuring Bobby Womack and Mos Def) 4:30
6. "Superfast Jellyfish" (featuring De La Soul and Gruff Rhys) 2:54
7. "Empire Ants" (featuring Little Dragon) 4:43
8. "Glitter Freeze" (featuring Mark E. Smith) 4:03
9. "Some Kind of Nature" (featuring Lou Reed) 2:59
10. "On Melancholy Hill" 3:53
11. "Broken" 3:17
12. "Sweepstakes" (featuring Mos Def and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble) 5:20
13. "Plastic Beach" (featuring Mick Jones and Paul Simonon) 3:47
14. "To Binge" (featuring Little Dragon) 3:55
15. "Cloud of Unknowing" (featuring Bobby Womack and sinfonia ViVA) 3:06
16. "Pirate Jet" 2:32


It’s been twenty one long years since Damon Albarn burst onto the music scene and even more staggeringly it’s been seventeen years since Albarn’s original creative breakthrough Modern Life Is Rubbish. After two decades of innovation and evolution it’s become clear that Damon has transcended his original scene to become a true musical albatross, a man unafraid (like so many of his peers) to dive headlong into the abyss and embrace the future. Now as Gorrilaz, with graphic artist Jamie Hewlett, Damon is about to launch into his third new decade of life on the cutting edge. However this time there will be no leeway, no one will be wowed to see a cartoon band parading around on stage, everyone is already expecting a long list of guest stars; in short the bells and whistles aren’t an option this time; Gorillaz have to knuckle down and knock the world on it’s head with their music and not their aesthetics. Plastic Beach after all is a pivotal album for Gorillaz, they are no longer an artistic outlet where anything goes, after the run away success of Demon Days Gorillaz are now festival headliners, bone fide pop superstars and legitimate cultural icons. Damon not only has to wow the music press artistically, he has millions of fans around the world waiting with baited breath to see the next evolution of pop music he promised us all. So for the first time since Blur’s brilliant 13 the pressure is well and truly on Mr. Albarn.

Well it may have been seventeen years since Modern Life Is Rubbish but if Plastic Beach is anything to go by it would seem nothing in the two subsequent decades has managed change Mr. Albarn’s prognosis. In fact Plastic Beach could easily be subtitled “Modern Life Is Sickening”. There has been a lot of talk in the music press that Plastic Beach would be Gorillaz’s environmental statement but in fact this album is far more than that. In Plastic Beach Damon Albarn has created a true concept album, more than a loose theme, Damon has forged his own world; the world of The Plastic Beach.. The Plastic Beach displayed on the album artwork is a fake plastic world, where everything is synthetic, everything has been recycled, this is a world that at times can feel like a neon nightmare or a plastic paradise (sometimes both at the same time). The album is pre-occupied with consumerism, where everything is man made, nothing is natural, people inhale air laced with disease, and they eat carrots that “taste just like chicken”.

To create this vision of the Plastic Beach; a secluded future island forged from the worst of human excess, Gorillaz’s offer a broad and dazzling array of soundscapes. Texturally the album is fascinating and frankly astounding. Album’s opener "Orchestral Intro" (a oriental classical piece) serves as our last contact with the natural world before we step onto the artificial sand of the Plastic Beach. From then on in we are presented with a never ending array of burbling electronica that at times can be both imposing and claustrophobic as seen on the maniacal "Sweepstakes", or oddly beautiful on “To Binge” or “On Meloncholy Hill”. It’s quite the achievement. At times we’re presented with a cultural clusterfuck where eighties synths clash with whirling robotic beeps and pounding bass lines; and at others we’re present with a strange tranquillity. As if your looking out over a holographic sea, it’s recalls the imagery of the natural world but still manages to feel totally alien. Plastic Beach is therefore a living breathing (well almost) world of it’s own, where you can take a nightmarish stroll through a futuristic Tokyo-eske metropolis over run by robots and consumerism; or you can sit atop a hill of garbage and look out at the soothing purple electronic sea. Plastic Beach is the twenty first century Magical Mystery Tour.

Similar to previous Gorillaz’ albums Plastic Beach is musically scatter shot as we leap between genres frantically. However unlike Demon Days and their self titled debut the broad spectrum of music is held together conceptually, making for a more satisfying listen. “White Flag” is the track which will first grab your attention as Kano and the brilliant Bashy of “Black Boys” fame play off each other brilliantly. They take the role of the last outcasts from the world we know arriving on the Plastic Beach waving the white flag of surrender. Musically it’s starts with orchestral sweeps before launching into a classic Mike Skinner/Professor Green calypso grime beat allowing Kano and Bashy to unload some of their best and most catchy couplets to date. It sets the theme for the album as a whole, sounds we’ve heard before, blended, remixed, and reformed into something new and for the most part something brilliant.

“White Flag” is followed immediately by “Rhinestone Eyes” one of the albums truly brilliant works. It’s stripped down, fuzzed out electronica over laid with futurist beeps and squeaks. Albarn gives one of his wide eyed wonder performances from under his usual vocal fog of melancholy while a simply irresistible synth riff powers the track home. The fuzzed out electronica is superb across the entire album with lead single “Stylo” being elevated by an unforgettable guest vocal from Bobby Womack before the album’s instrumental wonder “Glitter Freeze” takes centre stage. This is a track that blows away the competition as it zaps and thunders like a gorgeously sexy lazer battle. It’s all topped of by a mad cap spoken word performance by Mark E. Smith of all people. With that one track Gorillaz have managed to single handedly top all of the post Daft Punk club-tronica of the last nine years (sorry Justice).

In stark contrast to the more traditional hazy electronica stand the hip hop guest spots. Snoop Dogg’s intro is neither here nor there, it’s pleasant enough but is easily the albums most forgettable moment and is one of the rare moments where this LP won’t polarize opinion. Mos Def’s “Sweepstakes” sees him up the anti from his nonplussed performance on “Stylo” as he packs the rhymes in with a metronomic monotone delivery. As the track builds in intensity, it builds in quality, but whether the end product actually succeeds outside of the context of Plastic Beach is debatable. On the other hand De La Soul bring a vintage performance on “Superfast Jellyfish” as they in habit the neon cartoon world so fully that they come off more cartoony than 2D and Murdoch do. Again “Sweepstakes” is a track whose's value is greatly increased as a part of the Plastic Beach concept than it on it’s own individual merits. The hip hop therefore has a hit and miss element, it can be brilliant, but more often than not it's contextually reliant on the Plastic Beach concept to thrill.

Elsewhere Gorillaz dive into a psychedelic show tunes acid trip with Lou Reed on “Some Kind Of Nature”. A track that manages to both amuse and thrill. As they contrast a Transformer-eske Lou Reed performance with a heart felt and gorgeous vocal from Albarn. “Melancholy Hill” on the other hand, is a shrewd work of juxtaposition, contrasting a solemn vocal performance with a dreamy synth-pop soundscape. Across the entire album the electro-pop elements are firing on all cylinders whether it’s the shuddering Flaming Lips meets Tron grooves of “Empire Ants” or the albums spatteti-western electronic show tune finale “Private Jet”. The latter provides the album with the perfect send off as Albarn seems possessed. As if he’s been driven mad by the neon rubbish dump he now inhabits, as he dementedly croons with a brain washed fake plastic smile “It’s All Good News Now, Because We Left The Taps Running For A Hundred Years”. It’s the perfect sensory explosion to conclude a staggering album.

In Plastic Beach Damon Albarn has done more than just turn the pop world on its head. He’s torn it to shreds; ripping apart everything from The Beatles to Daft Punk all the way to A Tribe Called Quest and then melding it all back together to create some kind of beautifully hideous recycled pop behemoth. Plastic Beach affirms that Albarn and Gorillaz are the most forward thinking act in all of pop music. Plastic Beach is an album that never stands still, if there is an idea or a concept floating around in Damon or any of their guest host heads, they take it and explore it to its fullest depths. Unlike previous efforts this idea of an island of musical garbage and human excess ties together all of Gorillaz’s eccentricities, holding together an album that shouldn't work, yet can’t help but succeed. This album won’t be to everyone’s tastes, if you where hoping for sixteen “Feel Good Incs” or “Dares” then you may be disappointed, but if your mind is open to new experiences; then you may just be blown away by one the most staggering and definitely different pop records in musical history.

The 411: If Plastic Beach is anything to go by, then this decade will be much like the last for Damon Albarn. He will continue to push the envelope. While others rest of their laurels content with their own success, Gorillaz are creating their own pop culture revolution. Plastic Beach is one of the most beautifully realized and at times challenging concept albums ever made. Gorillaz show us an alternate future where the excesses of consumerism have created a fake plastic world where everything is borrowed, all is synthetic and even life itself isn't quite real. It's beautiful, it's terrifying, and it's never less than brilliant. Some may find the world of Plastic Beach too alien, but for those willing to embrace it with an open mind, you will find some of the most daring and revolutionary pop music made, since John Lennon took us on a trip to "Strawberry Fields". Ultimately Plastic Beach is daring, divisive and defiantly brilliant.

Final Score:  9.0   [  Amazing ]