Plastic Beach – Gorillaz

As ideas go, whatever shared brainwave struck Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett on the day they first conceived Gorillaz was a good’un. Spawned from hours spent watching reams of pop dross on MTV concocted to succeed on all counts but the music, with the invention of their animated four piece the only continuity the pair had to conform to were the characters 2D, Murdoc, Russel and Noodles.

In a classic case of ‘be careful what you wish for’ however, unlimited possibilities for the Gorillaz project have thus far met with underwhelming results.

The classic crux upon which any collaborative LP rests is of course the of variable quality of contributions. For every ‘Clint Eastwood’ Albarn’s multifaceted rolodex has thrown up, his two previous attempts to patch together various artists’ differing ideas of what a Gorillaz track should be hasn’t quite produced the classic that befits the masterplan.

Plastic Beach then holds the unenviable task of filtering a heavyweight guestlist featuring the likes of Snoop Dogg,  Lou Reed and Mick Jones through the lens of a further eco-friendly schematic. It is perhaps on this account then, why Albarn’s third outing under his caricatured moniker feels like such a triumph.

If anything confining the subject material of most tracks to a fictional wasteland located somewhere in the middle of the south Pacific has had a galvanising upon contributions to the record. As north-east London rapper Kano spits on the digi-funk tropics of ‘White Flag’, “If heaven had a VIP this is it: white sand, blue sea”.

Importantly for an album founded on a corroborative ethos, each star turn is well up to scratch with the past output of their respective co-conspirators. In particular Mark E. Smith’s pithy vocals provide a welcome anchor of cynicism in the midst of ‘Glitter Freeze’s swirl of pulsating Commodore 64 sound effects.

Where Damon himself chooses to take the lead the results are rarely less than remarkable. In direct contrast to its predecessors Plastic Beach isn’t a record chock-a-block with singles yet when it chooses to cast its eye towards the charts, as with groove driven lead ‘Stylo’, the effect is to embed each coda into the listeners sub-conscious. In direct contrast though similarly fine form, the typically tongue-in-cheek  ‘Melancholy Hill’ marks a poised pause for introspection in the midst of its relentlessly dystopic surroundings.

It comes as something of a shame then that the LP’s tide of good fortune just dips before the end of its 16 track duration. However, whereas one could point to the expendability of Mos Def and Boby Womback’s rambling ‘Sweepstakes’ or air fairy nonchalance of ‘To Binge’, given the reported exclusion of offerings by The Horrors and Barry Gibb, these tracks remain an important though not integral part in the grand scheme of Plastic Beach.

As such it would be churlish to dismiss what is effectively Albarn’s best album of the 21st century in any guise. For a concept album wrapped in cartoon packaging there’s scant room left for improvement but exactly enough to justify what would be an eagerly anticipated fourth instalment in a unerringly original oeuvre.

8/10