Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, the humans behind virtual group Gorillaz, don’t view death as the end, but as an excuse for a hell of a wake. Never ones for a morbid affair, they celebrate numerous collaborators on The Mountain (Kong) who have since passed on, including the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, De La Soul’s Dave ‘Trugoy’ Jolicoeur, soul legend Bobby Womack and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen. The result is a noble send-off, proving that the finality of death is no match for the transcendence of art.
Albarn and Hewlett, joined by producers James Ford, Samuel Egglenton, percussionist Remi Kabaka Jr. and Argentine EDM DJ Bizarrap, recorded the album all over the world, making for their most cosmopolitan affair yet, and mostly for the better. While unexpected artistic pairings have become less novel in their quarter century since 2001’s Gorillaz broke down genre lines, Albarn still has a flair for the unexpected. “The Empty Dream Machine” brings together the Roots’ Black Thought, the Smiths’ Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar for a reverie giving voice to a grief that defies words, and Jolicoeur and Womack remind us to enjoy it all while we still can on “The Moon Cave”.
Albarn was never quite as cynical as he presented himself on Blur’s ’90s state-of-the-nation missive Modern Life Is Rubbish, but he’s gotten downright utopian as he nears 60, showing both the world and himself that artists can bridge cultural gaps in ways politicians will never grasp. Here, they include enlisting Kara Jackson to plead “I’m not your enemy” on the whistle-laden “Orange County.” Sometimes his good intentions and good taste can get the better of him: the aggressively pleasant “The Sweet Prince” could be mistaken for something off a compilation you might buy from Starbucks or, egad, late-period Coldplay.
But whenever the party gets too polite, Gorillaz drop an unruly banger like the kaleidoscopic “Damascus” featuring frequent running mates Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def), reminding us that everyone’s always welcome on the dance floor.
