Gorillaz: The Mountain review – a late career peak haunted by ghosts yet glowing with life
It's been 25 years since Gorillaz released their self-titled debut album, a project that started as a jokey one-off by a Britpop star but has endured for a quarter of a century. This longevity has transformed Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's concept of a "virtual group" from a snarky gag into something oddly commonplace. Their latest release is launched into a world where cartoon K-pop bands Huntr/x and Saja Boys have collectively spent 100 weeks and counting on the UK singles chart, where the anime "vocaloid" Hatsune Miku is playing the O2 Arena, and where celebrated producer Timbaland has launched an AI-generated singer called Tata Taktumi. Meanwhile, Gorillaz' oeuvre has sprawled to nine albums, involving something like 100 guest artists; they are the thread that links Carly Simon to Shaun Ryder, Skepta to Lou Reed, and Bad Bunny to Mark E Smith.
Perhaps inevitably, marshalling so many eclectic contributors has proved a challenge, even for someone as undoubtedly talented as Damon Albarn. Gorillaz albums are seldom concise affairs and are of variable quality, thus tricky to navigate. The best ones are those unified by a strong underlying concept, as on Demon Days' glum survey of "the world in a state of night" post-9/11, or the ecological satire of 2010's Plastic Beach.
And so it proves with The Mountain, inspired in equal parts by a visit to India and the deaths of Albarn and Hewlett's fathers. Both seem reflected in the choice of guests. There are a host of Indian artists, from playback singer Asha Bhosle and eccentric space-disco diva Asha Puthli to a range of traditional musicians, including Anoushka Shankar. A sitar regularly twangs and buzzes (on The Plastic Guru, it twangs and buzzes in duet with the trebly guitar of Johnny Marr), a tambura regularly drones, and the utterly lovely melody of the opening title track is played on a bansuri.
A lot of names on the guest list are effectively speaking to the listener from beyond the grave: Albarn has returned to old recordings he made with the late Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, Mark E Smith, Tony Allen, and rappers Proof of D12 and Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul. Death is part of the album's sonic fabric, or more specifically, the sense that people live on after death. There's nothing eerie or lachrymose about the way Proof's guest verse bursts out of The Manifesto, or Mark E Smith snarls, slurs, and cackles his way through Delirium's massive chorus. Their voices sound commanding and powerful.
You might think you know what to expect from a Damon Albarn album informed by loss and grief. Melancholy is one of his trademark modes, expressed through the kind of wistful, descending melodies that liberally decorated Blur's last album, The Ballad of Darren. Those certainly appear here – there's a particularly beautiful example on The Empty Dream Machine – but the album's overall mood is weirdly upbeat: post-disco boogie with lush cinematic strings on The Moon Cave; Bhosle's vocals soaring joyfully over The Shadowy Light's tinny synths; the Arabic acid house of Damascus.
If it sometimes feels like it's trying a bit too hard to put a positive spin on things – Orange County splices Albarn's crestfallen vocal "the hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love" with a gratingly perky tune being whistled – the light and shade is more usually perfectly weighted. On The God of Lying, an ominous vocal from Idles frontman Joe Talbot is set over a gleefully chaotic low-rent reggae backing, to arresting effect. The Happy Dictator acknowledges the superficial appeal of being shielded from bad news – "The palace of your mind will be bright!" – while underlining that those who might want to shield you from bad news invariably have a dark, ulterior motive. The Sweet Prince pictures Albarn at his father's hospital bedside – "I was trying to say I love you, but you just looked the other way" – but the music offers muted elation in a hazy swirl of harp, sitar, and electronics, as if highlighting a theme that crops up over and over again in the album's lyrics, expressed in various ways and in different languages: "Living is the ending of the beginning."
Moreover, the themes seem to tie The Mountain together. It feels more consistent – more like an album, less like a playlist constructed by someone with impressively wide-ranging taste – than its immediate predecessors: something you're more likely to listen to from start to finish than play with your finger ready to click fast-forward, panning for the best bits. The result is an unexpected career highlight, a quarter of a century in.
This week Alexis listened to:
Goodbye – 13a
Goodbye fits broadly in the category of shoegaze revivalists, but their second single leans closer to the Cocteau Twins than My Bloody Valentine: stately, elating, transportive, and beautiful.
