Link: Gorillaz
The Inside Pulse:
Harkening back to the late ’60s, Gorillaz burst onto the scene a few years back with the gimmick of being a completely animated band of animals — gorillas of varying types, to be exact. Why make the artists faceless? MARKETING! Anyway, Demon Days doesn’t deviate much from the sound of its predecessor: ambient electropop, occasionally dark, with a trip-hop edge. The key is that for each of those monikers, Gorillaz transforms and morphs them together well. The drawback is that for this many subgenres smashed together, something gets lost in the translation, and that tends to be creating something that stays memorable for listeners who may not be exposed to something that eclectic on a regular basis. It may be that their idea was to focus on the “pop” aspect of their sound in order to achieve this; instead, it turns a lot of this disc into a blur of bleepy blah. They do well with experimentation, but too often they try to tie it all together with generic radio-friendly elements and loses the allover personality.
Positives:
First single — and possible payola — “Feel Good Inc” will be the one engrained in your brain, but “White Light” and “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead” are offbeat masterpieces sure to be overlooked because they don’t fit the right niche. There are a lot of moments like that throught the album, just not entire songs.
Negatives:
It’s one thing to have weak points on an album, which this disc most certainly does; but wow, the last three tracks absolutely fizzle out with no fanfare, no hooks, and no desire to keep going. Total downer.
Cross-breed:
Portishead and Outkast and Gus Gus and Morcheeba and Aphex Twin and God Lives Underwater and, well, yeah. A little of damn near everything, then slap a marketing agent on top of it all.
Reason to buy:
Because someone paid the radio station to play it, so it must be good. Ouch, that’s harsh… really, it’s not that bad. Buy it because you like the single but aren’t too serious about getting into the trip-hop genre or any real electro.
