Gorillaz: Cracker Island review – smaller, subtler, and better for it

(Parlophone)
Damon Albarn has reined within the extra – though there are still cameos from the likes of Dangerous Bunny and Stevie Nicks – for a trim album that is likely one of the band’s greatest

Right here’s a sobering thought for anybody sufficiently old to recall the early 00s first-hand: Cracker Island arrives 22 years on from Gorillaz’s debut single, Clint Eastwood. Based by Damon Albarn, an alt-rock star apparently dabbling in pop, and his former flatmate Jamie Hewlett, who provided the cartoons, it was a challenge you may need assumed can be a short-lived joke. But almost a quarter of a century on, Gorillaz have made as many studio albums as Albarn’s main band and, in the process, have achieved things Blur haven’t: a string of US Prime 10 albums, one in every of them double-platinum; a Grammy; and entente cordiale with Oasis – or at the very least Noel Gallagher, who appeared on 2017’s We Received the Energy.

They’ve additionally proved oddly prescient. You don’t hear many bands who sound like Blur today, however we reside in an era when pop is fuelled by the sort of cross-genre collaborations that started popping up on Gorillaz’s eponymous debut album and had kind of consumed their output completely by the discharge of 2010’s Plastic Beach. In fact, their current prevalence in all probability has more to do with making an attempt to recreation the streaming providers’ genre-specific playlists than Gorillaz’s affect, but still. You'll be able to see the mark their tracks Feel Good Inc and Soiled Harry left on Gen Z’s nascent musical style by the truth that Gorillaz are still enjoying arenas and headlining festivals years after their albums stopped shifting in the type of portions they once bought; last yr, Billie Eilish stated Albarn “modified my life” when she invited him to sing Feel Good Inc together with her at Coachella.