Gorillaz: Song Machine, Season One - Strange Timez review

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s twenty-two year-old project looks to the future…

Since the release of 2010’s “Plastic Beach”, Damon Albarn has been delving deep into the phone book and with each new album comes new collaborations.

Gorillaz has grown into a multi-dimensional force. It’s become a vehicle for Albarn to transport the listener to different corners of the music world, chauffeuring us through dance districts and rap regions, pointing out punk provinces and funk farmlands along the way.

What started out as a concept - memorable hits fronted by a cartoon band - has expanded into something altogether more enthralling. This twenty-two-year-old project has filled out. The monkey business remains but the fog has lifted from the supercilious smokescreens of the past and now Gorillaz’s direction feels clearer. With their latest release, it’s apparent that their music is looking to the future.

If their first album at times felt like stylistic madness - understandable given it was the lovechild of a comic creator and a rockstar - then this latest offering is a display of stable songwriting. However, it’s easy to understand where the madness derived from in those early days. One man was the architect of the anarchic, absurdist 80’s comic book “Tank Girl” and the other was trying to wriggle free from the Britpop headlock he found himself in, fronting one of the biggest bands of the early 90’s during one of the most scrutinised eras in British music history. If “Demon Days” gave the impression of an album that couldn’t care less about balance or sequence, “Song Machine” by comparison, feels assured.

Over the course of the last decade, Gorillaz has featured collaborations with artists spanning the entire musical spectrum - Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Grace Jones and Terry Hall to name a few. Such an eclectic mix can lend itself to brazenness and a sense of limits being unconstrained. “Song Machine” feels more like a structured song-cycle, a considered carousel of collaboration and creativity.

It’s been dripped to us via a web series but now arrives immortalised in one fully formed album. The episodic nature of releasing a song almost monthly before the eventual arrival of this feature-length piece felt steeped in 21st-century culture, entertaining society’s need for consistent supplies of streamable content. 

Albarn’s gift for melodic melancholy is ever-present and shines and the songwriting feels honed. His careful curation of guest artists is not only indicative of his own great taste in far-reaching music but feels more studied and deliberate than ever.

“Song Machine” feels like a project that doesn’t just boast it’s A-listers but uses them for maximum effect. Cameos from old hands like Robert Smith and Elton John serve their purpose. You get the sense that Robert Smith appears on the album opener because Albarn knows he can translate mournfulness like no-one else. Elton John is used on “The Pink Phantom” to deliver operatic power for the goosebump moments Albarn used to keep reserved for the late, great Bobby Womack. 

But each nod to the past is swiftly accompanied by a reminder of the future. Elton John’s warble brushes against the digitised vocals of rapper 6lack and reminds him and us that this legend is now serving a new auto-tuned master. Schoolboy Q and Kano’s cameos keep things moving into the new era. 

A highlight comes in the form of funk and Beck and the intergalactic disco tune “Heavy Pagans” which sneers at the new world of Instagram posers. “Desole” is anthemic and wrought with emotion thanks to Fatoumata Diawara’s heartfelt howl . Albarn’s drowsy occupancy of “Simplicity” is delicate and beautiful, singing with the fatigue of a man who’s just got out of a slightly-too-hot bath. 

“Song Machine” is a perfect snapshot of the point in history in which it exists. In a world of limited human interaction, there’s magic to be found in a record that puts collaboration at its heart.