★★★★
A fictional band is a hell of a platform, and Damon Albarn has used Gorillaz to let lose his wildest pop fantasies. It was easy to tell Albarn wasn't interested in being trapped within the confines of a band after his fallout with Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. Since its debut in 2001 Gorillaz has acted as an outlet for Albarn, and each album has been fascinated with styles far from Blur's Britpop. Their self-titled debut was an experimentation in dub, while nearly every song on 2005's fantastic Demon Days was rooted in Hip-Hop. Now with Plastic Beach Damon Albarn presents us with a tapestry of pop, full of orchestral swells and Wilson-esque grandiosity.
Don't let the Snoop Dogg fool you, Plastic Beach isn't the murky Bush-era rap album that was Demon Days. The album is both parts melancholy and eager anticipation, with haunting pop ballads based more in electronic music than trip-hop. There are moments of psycheldelic layering that recall The Soft Bulletin, and other times we get muted electronica reminiscent of Air or even Hot Chip. On Demon Days Albarn's collaborators dominated on a lot of tracks. Here the featured performers seem to adapt more to the album, like the brilliant Bobby Womack on "Stylo" and even Lou Reed on "Some Kind of Nature". The album has a cohesiveness that really draws you in and makes you appreciate its little nuances that much more. There was talk that this Gorillaz album was never happening, but the progress made on Plastic Beach makes me very excited about the future of this project.
Key Tracks: "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach", "Superfast Jellyfish", "Plastic Beach"
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