GORILLAZ
Demon Days
EMI
· Gorillaz are people, too.
To some, the idea of a cartoon hip hop band is a really bad idea, but with their debut album in 2001 Gorillaz managed to overcome that stigma with a ridiculously fun release. It’s easy to assume Damon Albarn’s allegiance to his most successful of side-projects may soon endanger his more "serious" (whatever) work with Blur. Given that band’s most recent changes in membership (namely the removal of co-founding member Graham Coxon, perhaps the finest guitar player of his generation) caused such a stir, perhaps part of the allure Gorillaz holds for Albarn is the ease with which he can discard and pick up collaborators. We are, after all, talking about an animated hip hop group here.
So for Demon Days, out are Dan the Automator (producer) and Jamie Hewlett (visual artist in charge of the group’s grand videos), and in are Dangermouse (he of The Grey Album fame), De La Soul, MF Doom, and Dennis Hopper.
As a master of disposable pop, Albarn has always been a pro at putting together an album that is senselessly stupid and catchy. Where Blur’s most recent output dwells in elegiac ballad territory, Demon Days is a perfect piece of fluff. With a proud history of singles already behind him, the De La Soul-assisted "Feel Good Inc." is yet another three impossible-to-shake minutes – and check that video of a windmill-driven floating island.
But dude, Gorillaz are cartoons. How seriously can one take Demon Days? Well, when the results are as good as "El Manana," the daft "Dirty Harry" (a sequel of sorts to "Clint Eastwood") and the Hopper-narrated "Fire Coming Out of a Monkey’s Head," it’s not all that hard to dismiss the stupid concept and just go with it.
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