These “guys” have been
on my radar forever but
something has prevented me
from taking the plunge.
Did I listen to some stuff
that I didn’t like? Was the
cartoon character motif
too much for me, like if I
couldn’t identify the musicians
as real people I wasn’t
able to take a chance?
Even after I discovered
that this was, in large part, a
side project of Damon Albarn
from Blur fame, I still held
back. Even this month, when
the new Gorillaz album is
released, I stream it out of
curiosity but can’t decide
if I like it. I know they’re
huge, these cartoon characters,
but I haven’t yet been converted.
And then, a number of years ago,
my entry point comes around.
Billed as Gorillaz Present Song Machine,
what I gathered, and what was
interesting to me in 2020,
was that here was a Gorillaz
album with a bunch of my
favorite people on it as featured
artists or guest vocalists:
Robert Smith, Beck, St. Vincent,
Elton John, and a number of
other, at least to me, more
obscure artists. But those guest
appearances were a selling
point, and I grabbed
this record. Most of these tunes
are written or co-written by
Albarn, and most of these
tunes are sung by him in a kind
of duet with the visiting famous
person. It’s a fun record. I find
it enjoyable and tuneful and
the guest performances showcase
the featured artist prominently
and appropriately. The Robert
Smith and Beck collabs, in particular,
are groovy and good. I could use
more St. Vincent in that number
of hers, but Albarn has a smooth,
pleasant singing voice, and hearing
him side by side Elton John, and
Elton side by side the R&B singer
6lack is a bit of a trip. I think the
Gorillaz schtick is that it serves first
as a collaborative engine for
Damon Albarn. The cartoon
element presents a kind of
imaginative world and mystery
into which Albarn can freely explore
a wide musical palette without
being confined to pesky “bandmates.”
Listeners understand, that if the
Gorillaz project is anything,
it’s a genre hopper. Mostly, on
this album it sounds like
good British pop, but it’s also
dance music, it’s funky, soulful,
there are a couple of punk moments,
it incorporates world music
elements, (check out the sitar
on the new record The Mountain,
or on this record, the collab with
Fatoumata Diawara), and finally,
there are hip hop elements, and
I fear that it might have been
this last element that kept me
away for so long. It’s possible that
the only Gorillaz music I heard
for awhile was rap adjacent and
I didn’t really care for that. Maybe
I falsely concluded that this was
at its center a hip hop project.
Hip hop, while I appreciate some of
it and can dig it in small doses,
has just never become my thing.
However, I like it here. I like it on
the Rosalia album. I like it when
in collaboration with other things
that I like. I conclude that revisiting
this record has been almost entirely
favorable, that I should revisit their
new album at least a couple of
times, and that I might need to
be more open to the wider Gorillaz oeuvre.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Gorillaz Present Song Machine, Parlaphone Records, 2020, translucent pink vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 