Gorillaz is a virtual band of cartoon apes. They’ve recorded hit songs and sold out animated concerts. If that doesn’t prove that they can pretty much do whatever they want, having Snoop Dogg welcome listeners on the opening track of their new album, Plastic Beach, does. 
And then the National Orchestra for Arabic Music shows up on the next song, “White Flag,” and you stop asking these can they/can’t they questions.
Created in 1998 by Damon Albarn (that guy from Blur) and comic book-creator Jamie Hewlett as a kind of commentary on that year’s excess of pre-fab boy bands, Gorillaz took the idea of bands as caricatures and, ironically, created a group that has outlasted and outsold many of their human targets. Like their previous album, Demon Days, Plastic Beach blends dance-pop and hip-hop. This time around, that marriage is emphasized by the number and variety of contributors: Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Little Dragon, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Bobby Womack… and for kicks, a cameo from Bruce Willis in the video for the beat-driven first single “Stylo.”
“Superfast Jellyfish” gets silly with retro-rap from Gruff Ryhs and De La Soul and a chorus that sounds and reads like a commercial jingle for children’s sugary cereal. “Empire Ants” opens as a dreamy synth lullaby, transforming halfway through into hypnotic electric loops. “Glitter Freeze” jumps again into spastic rave synths broken up by featured artist Mark E. Smith’s prophetic-sounding spoken word and cackling.
Gorillaz – maybe because, in a sense, they don’t exist in the first place – always has a lot of room to play around with styles and guest artists. It’s hard to pigeon-hole them into a genre. Plastic Beach is sometimes a reinvention, sometimes more of the same. Compared to Demon Days, this album is heavier on rap but also heavier on electric dance anthems. It’s jam-packed (16 songs, well over an hour long) with such a mixture of music that it’s impossible to define by one or two tracks. We get “Sweepstakes,” pure rap from guest artist Mos Def set against a frustratingly distracting dance beat backdrop – the only song for me which just didn’t work. And then there’s “To Binge,” a sparkly love song that sounds (appropriately) like an afternoon at the beach.
Plastic Beach could be more cohesive. It could be shorter. But as usual, Gorillaz pushes the limit and gets away with it.
Track Listing:
1. Orchestral Intro (ft. Sinfonia ViVA)
2. Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (ft. Snoop Dogg and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
3. White Flag (ft. Kano, Bashy, and the National Orchestra for Arabic Music)
4. Rhinestone Eyes
5. Stylo (ft. Bobby Womack and Mos Def)
6. Superfast Jellyfish (ft. Gruff Rhys and De La Soul)
7. Empire Ants (ft. Little Dragon)
8. Glitter Freeze (ft. Mark E. Smith)
9. Some Kind of Nature (ft. Lou Reed)
10. On Melancholy Hill
11. Broken
12. Sweepstakes (ft. Mos Def and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
13. Plastic Beach (ft. Mick Jones and Paul Simonon)
14. To Binge (ft. Little Dragon)
15. Cloud of Unknowing (ft. Bobby Womack and Sinfonia ViVA)
16. Pirate Jet
