Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

First off, I’m going to say that this is a very tough album for me. The Gorillaz previous effort, Demon Days is one of my favorite albums (it’s still a bit early to say “all time”) of the past five years. I think it was a pretty unique sounding album with a flawless blend of underground and pop music. That being said, it was very difficult for me to judge this album on its own merit. After about two weeks of listens, I think I’m ready to do that.

Demon Days (last time its mentioned, I promise) is a much better album. Its time to move move on with it. Plastic Beach is still very good. Musically and lyrically, it has an island theme. This is juxtaposed with images of the plasticity of modern society and the melancholy acceptance of this in our lives.

While the album in itself is tighter in theme ( having intro and outro tracks, and lyrical/musical congruities), it seems a little meandering. Maybe they could have used a producer to make the songs a bit more concise. The tracks are a bit repetitive. Although there is a swelling cacophony in production, the songwriting itself doesn’t build to much. Many songs feel like they should either end sooner or build to a much more dramatic climax. I guess that kind of fits with the theme, but it makes the album feel stretched at times.

Now that I got that out of the way, I should say there are some really great songs that I love on this album. Empire Ants, featuring Yukimi Nagano is my favorite track. It’s pretty unique to the album and sounds more pop than Caribbean. Both songs with Bobby Womack vocals sound great. Broken sounds like it could have been an outtake form David Bowie’s Outside. The best rapping on the album comes from Bashy and Kano on White Flag.

All in all, even though I definitely have mixed feelings with this album, after a few listens, the good totally outweighs the bad and its definitely worth checking out.