Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

‘Plastic Beach’ comes from the virtual UK trip-hoppers after 2005’s ‘Demon Days’. In between, Gorillaz, as a virtual band and the brainchild of Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, had a documentary (‘Bananaz’) about them and released ‘D-sides’ to ‘Demon Days’.

Albarn and Hewlett also worked on ‘Monkey: Journey to The West’, which was a circus-opera type musical with oriental influences. This is worth a mention because the orchestral influence is seen throughout Plastic Beach, beginning with, well, ‘Orchestral Intro’ and seen in other songs like ‘Rhinestone Eyes’ and ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. The oriental influence, which was also borrowed from ‘Monkey…’ is seen in ‘White Flag’ and ‘Empire Ants’ – which features Japanese-Swedish singer Yukimi Nagano.

And that’s not where collaboration stops. The album features an array of artists, all from different genres including Gruff Rhys, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.

The first single, ‘Stylo’ was well received, as was the video (which featured…. Bruce Willis?). ‘Stylo’ is the 5^th song of the 16-track album, and one expects a mood or a flow to have set in at this point in the playlist, but Gorillaz do the complete opposite, moving into the funny and cheerful ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ and then to a electro-pop, tad-bit optimistic ‘Empire Ants’ which moves from a crooning 2D in the first half and then letting Electric Dragon (Nagano’s band) take over with booming beats.

Another constant feature running throughout the album, probably because of the collaborations, is the minimal vocals from 2D. It seems as though, he’d rather trip out on the music or play synth, letting heavy-weights like Mark E. Smith, Bobby Womack and Mos Def take over vocal duties, still joining in the chorus on songs like ‘Some Kind of Nature’, ‘Glitter Freeze’ and ‘Sweepstakes’.

Compare it to ‘Demon Days’ and you won’t find any similarities. With no particular theme or fade-in songs, Gorillaz don’t apply themselves to any set formula at all. But compare it to their self-titled debut, and you’ll find a few songs, like ‘Superfast Jellyfish’, which can (in this writer’s opinion) be drawn parallels with ‘Rock The House’.

‘Cloud of Unknowing’, the second last album on the album proves to come across as a build-up, with Bobby Womack’s mood being much different now than from his appearance on ‘Stylo’ – that of a castaway’s lament. But the track fades out, and ‘Pirate Jet’, almost comes across as a haunting video-game theme. Being the album closer, it still makes you want to listen to the whole album again – to go another round. The bonus tracks on the deluxe edition - ‘Pirate’s Progress’ and ‘Three Hearts, Seven Seas, Twelve Moons’ - also deserve a special mention for re-iterating that ‘Plastic Beach’ indeed draws strongly from orchestral elements and centers around ecology-related themes.

The favourite picks and the must-hears and the instantly-on-repeat songs include ‘Stylo’, both of the Little Dragon efforts ‘Empire Ants’ and ‘To Binge’, ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ and ‘Glitter Freeze’.

“On the cloud of unknowing
Every satellite up here is watching
Waiting to see what the morning brings
May bring sunshine on it’s wings”

A single word to describe the theme, the structure and the style of ‘Plastic Beach’ is “outlandish.” And after all, isn’t what one thinks of when they hear a bizarre word with possibly dystopian connotations?