the feeling of dread before clicking on new gorillaz + my personal favorite tracks
weather: ☀️ winter has been called off this year
critters: doves; hummingbirds
since i've been avoiding any place online i might accidentally see commentary on the new album, this is as untainted an opinion as i can possibly have: so far, nothing from the mountain is very good by gorillaz standards. or maybe "not good" is hard to distinguish from "not for me."
like i'm still pretty sure "ghost train" sucks--but how can that be true when everyone else likes it? seems i'm the weak link here. it's not that it's not good, it's just not for me. (and i'm open to having my mind changed about this kind of thing. i didn't think HEALTH was "for me," as i'm not a heterosexual 23-year-old, but i liked CONFLICT DLC. maybe it's because i'm a gamer?)
anyway, everything i've heard so far off the mountain feels like a plastic beach outtake with some the-beatles-do-india instrumentation. example: "orange county." is this a bad song? noooo. did i forget about it quickly, like the other tracks released from the mountain? yes. am i the problem? dunno yet. i'm not gonna check for the public consensus until the album actually drops in full. however, i can't be the only one thinking of the flimsy steve tweet.
favorite tracks (and a retrospective)
albums are in chrono order, favorite tracks are in descending order.
gorillaz
"new genius (brother)," "tomorrow comes today," "dracula," "double bass," "left hand suzuki method"
fans who are older than me remember seeing the music videos on MTV. (at the time, i was more interested in the powerpuff girls. if only i'd known how relevant that would become.) i didn't hear anything from this album until after plastic beach came out, but it's become one of my favorites. its eclecticism feels careful and interesting.
demon days
"o green world," "feel good inc.," "dare," "white light," "dirty harry"
demon days was my first exposure to their music. it was my freshman year when i first saw a snippet of the "feel good inc." music video in a commercial for now that's what i call music! 19. (egad, what a different world i lived in.) the notion of a non-archies animated music video blew my mind.
rather than risk my parents walking in on a TV with tits and ass on it, as i suspected might happen if i switched to any of the MTV spinoffs that still showed music videos, i got on the PC and visited the now-defunct yahoo music video service my dad used at work to listen to tears for fears and styx. murdoc turned me gay and now here we are.
d-sides
"spitting out the demons," "rockit," "we are happy landfill," "people"
all of these fell into my ears via youtube recommendations in the late 00s and early 10s. except for "spitting out the demons," which my boyfriend linked me. saying i like these feels a little pretentious, like i'm bragging about knowing all the deep cuts. i promise i'm being sincere!
plastic beach
"rhinestone eyes," "plastic beach," "on melancholy hill," "empire ants"
this was the first big album event i experienced with my boyfriend--back then, there was a whole ARG and a web game, which we both obsessed over for a while.
it was also our first big album disappointment when they blew their budget on the CGI/live-action music video for "stylo"--one wonders how much went to bruce willis' paycheck--and never animated "rhinestone eyes," which was supposed to be important to the plot. figuring out what actually happened in the story of this album is almost impossible without outside help. and i'm uncomfortable with how much i hate some of these tracks ("superfast jellyfish," "glitter freeze") and especially how much i hate one of the attendant singles ("doncamatic").
nonetheless, i appreciate the sky-high ambition apparent in the whole album and surrounding material. it's what got my boyfriend to track down a copy of rise of the ogre. i don't think any gorillaz album since this one has reached for the stars so hard.
the fall
"phoner to arizona," "little pink plastic bags," "amarillo," "aspen forest"
the fall had almost no fanfare and i remember the fandom at the time not liking it much. i think it's pretty good for something damon apparently made on the road, but it's obvious listening to it why left little impression. i didn't even hear the entire thing until almost two years after release...
humanz
"momentz," "charger," "busted and blue," "ascension," "saturnz barz," ZHU remix of "andromeda," "she's my collar"
i have mentioned elsewhere that humanz felt like a letdown at first, but it's grown on me a lot. i don't know much about the production background of this album but it does mostly sound like a planned, coherent whole. mostly. there's a studied eclecticism in humanz i didn't know i was missing--it made plastic beach seem more like a thrown-spaghetti project than i'd thought.
the now now
the entire album except "hollywood" and "sorcererz"
if i had to choose an underrated gorillaz release, the now now would be it. i had completely missed its release between humanz and song machine at the time (except for the "humility" music video, the spiritual opposite of the "feel good inc." video and a delight to watch). there's a refreshing lack of flimsy stevery throughout.
song machine
"the lost chord," "chalk tablet towers," "désolé," "aries," "valley of the pagans"
my boyfriend responded more enthusiastically to song machine than i did, though it seems to have fallen in his esteem since the episodes were first coming out. if i ever go to a music service looking for the gorillaz, i almost never pick up the song machine stuff.
cracker island
"new gold," "baby queen," "skinny ape"
when i first streamed cracker island i was like "it'll probably grow on me like humanz did," and, uh...🤷♂️ you can tell it started as leftover song machine material.
those three tracks are great, though. i showed "skinny ape" to my brother, a charli xcx fan, and he quietly added it to his spotify. victory.
i don't actually like listening to entire gorillaz albums front to back. there are tracks on every one that i actually just hate, and this is true for almost every pop and pop-adjacent album i enjoy. (non-gorillaz example: i liked lady gaga's mayhem but i skip "how bad do u want me" and "blade of grass.")
but i keep sticking with the gorillaz because the project seldom repeats itself. there are very few musicians i listened to twenty years ago that i still listen to now--my taste as a teenager was simply not good--but the gorillaz are one of a handful of exceptions because it's never been allowed to stay the same. the gorillaz are why i listened to monkey: journey to the west and remembered the existence of unknown mortal orchestra. damon &c are always doing stuff, forever, and i hope they continue.
so, like, please let the mountain be good in aggregate. PLEASE.