popwreckoning

Top 5 Albums of the Year:

• Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
• Titus Andronicus – The Monitor
• The Black Keys – Brothers
• The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang
• Carney – Mr. Green Vol. 1

Best Show of 2010:

• Stone Temple Pilots: This was by far one of my favorite shows to shoot this year. I grew up with this band all through Jr. High and High School and didn’t think they would be able pull this tour off but they did.

Most Anticipated of 2011:

• Social Distortion
• Bush
• Dr. Dre (Not holding my breath on this, but it’s way overdue)
• Radiohead
• Death Cab For Cutie

Most Overrated of 2010:

• We Are The World 2010: This was just a bad idea to begin with. I understand they were doing this for the devastation that happened in Haiti, but they could have thought of something more original than re-recording a song with a bunch of annoying entertainers and z-lister’s. Don’t even get me started on the overuse of auto tune.
• Kanye West : I am so tired of hearing this guy bitch. KANYE, STFU!
• Carrie Underwood: She’s the main reason I will NEVER shoot a Country act ever again.

Best Musical Memory of 2010:

• I’ve had quite a few this year and coming on with PopWreckoning and shooting American Idol were big for me. But my favorite had to be hanging out with Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and shooting a portrait of him at Sasquatch.

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

Murdoc from Gorillaz has been wreaking havoc online from his new home on the Plastic Beach island. Check out a trailer for the Pirate Radio broadcast.

The 2010 line-up for Coachella has been revealed.

Jay-Z, Muse and the Gorillaz will headline the festival that stretches from Friday, April 16 to Saturday, April 18 in Indio, California. Other notable performances include Pavement as part of their reunion tour and Thom Yorke????, and though his name is still followed by several question marks, he is there. That is seriously the name of his new solo-band project.

See the full line-up in the flyer below or at Coachella.com. Tickets officially go on-sale for the event January 22, 2010 at 10 a.m.