Review: Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach (2010) [EMI] // Grade: A+
The theme with Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz project seems to be one album about every half decade and right on that mark, Albarn and his rag tag bunch of always unexpected collaborators satiate anticipation with a third album, Plastic Beach. Derived from the Gorillaz unfinished Carousel project, Plastic Beach pulls from cross-cultural influences, tapping a wide variety of collaborators including Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Kano, Lou Reed, Gruff Rhys, Snoop Dogg and The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music on a record that’s more pop than anything else.
Plastic Beach is wildly inventive and once you give the album a few listens in its entirety, you’ll agree that no one else but Albarn under the Gorillaz moniker could have pulled off cartoon pop with this much creativity and charisma. Albarn executed the majority of the album’s production himself and his ear for pairing his guest vocalists with just the right backing tracks is an artform in itself. The carinvalesque electronic big band beats of “Sweepstakes” host a slew of dizzying, woozy rhymes from Mos Def. Unexpectedly, Lou Reed is at his best we’ve heard him in years lending the slowly-paced tongue of his classic years to “Some Kind of Nature” over a bright landscape of light poppy beats met by an orchestral chorus. All three of Plastic Beach’s singles “Stylo”, “Superfast Jellyfish” and “On Melancholy Hill” are excellent, but “Stylo” is the standout of the bunch, one of the album’s strongest tracks, taken to another level via Bobby Womack’s politically-charged, impassioned wailing.
Plastic Beach crashes through cultural and music barriers, mixing hip hop with space pop, world music with funk and every possible combination in between. It’s perhaps a less conceptual album than the previous Gorillaz releases, but easily nabs Albarn the long-deserved title of creative visionary. Kudos to Albarn for keeping the Gorillaz going a decade and only getting more inventive and original along the way.
March 12th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Always been a bit on the fence when it comes to the Gorillaz… usually like a few tracks on any given album and find some others absolutely unlistenable but this is a pretty glowing review – so I suppose I’ll have to check it out.
March 12th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Well I should comment to that, that I’ve been a huge Gorillaz fan since Day 1.
Plastic Beach is all around more approachable than their previous releases since it leans so far into pop. There’s much less of that “conceptual for sake of it” element at play. So if that’s what turned you off some in the past, you’ll probably find Plastic Beach more enjoyable than their other stuff. But it’s still a Gorillaz album and it definitely retains the expansive mash-up feel of their other albums.
March 13th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
I also had to give it a listen a few times to really appreciate it.
The first time I heard it, I though “well this is a pretty good Gorillaz album.”
Then as it went I fell in love.
My personal favorite tracks are Glitter Freeze, Rhinestone Eyes, Broken, and The Welcome (because its Snoop, ya know)
Definitely a great album to ride around with.