Damon Albarn has clearly always relished the concept of the musical curveball. He did it with Blur when many had pegged them as a one-note Britpop act; he did it with his various supergroups over the years (who would have ever dreamed up a band comprised of him, Flea and Tony Allen?); he did it with his incursions into African music with Africa Express, and he has even done it with his solo material in more recent times.
Gorillaz, however, has been arguably his most consistently dynamic musical project to date. With each of the virtual band’s albums – Cracker Island is their eighth – Albarn has enlisted an increasingly unexpected gathering of guests (Mark E Smith and Lou Reed singing pop songs? Ike Turner playing piano? Robert Smith, Jean-Michel Jarre, Bobby Womack ... the list goes on.)
Of course, that changed with 2019′s The Now Now, which saw Albarn close the collaborative doors temporarily, only to thrust them back open with aplomb on 2020′s Song Cycle project. Always in pursuit, as he puts it himself, of crafting “a serious pop record”.
Inspired by time spent in Los Angeles during 2021, Cracker Island is one of the best Gorillaz albums yet. Between the prickly energy of the opening song – a streetwise, funky synth-pop number featuring Thundercat – and the melancholy acoustic patter of closer Possession Island (featuring a subtle turn from Beck), Albarn squeezes as much joy and pathos as possible into these songs.
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Stevie Nicks duets on the dreamy sweep of Oil, a track that pits conflict against community (“Individual actions change the world/ Fill them up with love”); the song was originally intended for Julian Casablancas but with Nicks on board, sounds like a contemporary offshoot of Tango in the Night. Rapper Bad Bunny brings a reggaeton vibe to the Latin/Caribbean flavour of Tormenta; Tame Impala and Bootie Brown’s psych-pop and hip-hop backgrounds collide beautifully on New Gold, while English singer Adeleye Otayamo adds a soulful current to the synthy wash of Silent Running.
Perhaps tellingly, however, it’s not the collaborations that reverberate loudest here. Albarn’s accidental duet with Siri on the soft plod of The Tired Influencer is enchanting, while the Los Angeles influence threaded throughout these songs is keenly felt on the feelgood Tarantula and the self-referential Skinny Ape. The latter’s giddy little breakdown is irresistibly buoyant.
“Don’t be sad for me,” Albarn’s animated alter-ego 2D croons on the song’s chorus, “I’m a cartoon G/ And my intent is to breathe in a new world.” With Cracker Island, Gorillaz have once again successfully created a musical cosmos that couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else.
