It would be remiss of me to call the album a total throwaway, even if most of its material is middling. Gorillaz, and mainly Damon Albarn, have always had an affinity for good hooks, and on some rare moments the album does live up to these. Easy standout goes to the track "New Gold" featuring Tame Impala and Bootie Brown, which is probably the closest thing the album has to a certified banger - it's got a great beat, some fittingly breezy and wide instrumentation from one Tame Impala, and a solid hook from Albarn himself (2D? Depends on how much you're willing to play along). The preceding track "Silent Running" also does quite well for itself, although it's probably mostly the solid electronic instrumental doing most of the work if I'm being honest. I also enjoyed the cut "Oil" which, curiously enough, features a feature from none other than Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, and while her contributions feel minimal, they are still welcome. The album's general themes about the confusing modern world aren't necessarily bad either, and they at least provide the album with some structure of ideas - all I'll say, though, is that Blur's own Modern Life is Rubbish came out 30 years before this.
Unfortunately, all the style in the world can't make up for the fact that this album doesn't sound a thing like a Gorillaz project - hell, it doesn't even sound that distinct from any other pop music being made now. The opening track "Cracker Island" sets you up for this at least, letting you know right away that what we're getting into is no masterwork from the group. Of course, not everything needs to be groundbreaking or unique, and I would be willing to forgive a lot of that if A: the album kept itself somewhat interesting or B: if it was at least consistently fun to listen to. This isn't the case for either of these, and ultimately Cracker Island becomes a little bit of a snoozefest because of it, made even worse by the fact that the album is a front-loader. While the first half still contains some of the most embarrassing lyrical moments in songs like "The Tired Influencer" (whose name is a better joke than I could ever write), it at least has some fun moments to balance it out. I find very little reason to listen to this album past "New Gold" except for maybe the closing track "Possession Island", which at least has Beck here to make it alright.
Cracker Island isn't necessarily painful to listen to, and it isn't even as boring as something like Five Easy Hot Dogs from earlier this year. Ultimately, Cracker Island will do the job as background noise with the occasional good or more-than-good song on the first half. In terms of Gorillaz, even with their more spotty catalog as of recent, it's hard to see this as more than an inessential later stage album, more than 20 years gone from their debut and almost the same amount of time since they became the nostalgia-evoking band that I associate with them from Demon Days. Chalk it up to me being a cynic? I suppose you could, but Gorillaz's latest album leaves very little new gold to be found.
RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯
Listen to Cracker Island.
Comments
Post a Comment