Has a hero or musician you looked up to, just utterly disappoint you? Yeah, that's the case here, sadly.
"Humanz", is the newest Gorillaz album, a virtual band, created by musician Damon Albarn, and artist Jamie Hewlett. They released a few albums throughout the 2000's that changed the definition of a band, that proved you can blend genres and make hits from them, and they brought together so many artists that no one would even except to listen to. Each project has a "phase", a few awesome music videos, the band showed a lot of character, and it pulled through with all their songs, even the features. The first album "Gorillaz" showed what the band could do, "Demon Days" showcased what the band was capable of, "Plastic Beach" was the album that wore progression, or experimentation. I think what happened after, was sort of a downfall. "The Fall" came out shortly after "Plastic Beach", it was recorded on the Gorillaz World Tour, and was recorded on an iPad. While, it was nice to see a more stripped down, "raw" side of Gorillaz, I couldn't help but take this as a Damon Albarn album, but with "weird" production, to keep in tone with the Gorillaz sound. It didn't really work. After that, was the incredible "DoYaThing" single with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, and Andre 3000. Shortly after this, we heard of the falling out of Hewlett and Albarn. Hewlett described, he thought his contributions to the band were getting smaller and smaller. The band was getting bigger and bigger on the tour, but the visuals were starting to become less important. A vast contrast of the Demon Days tour, in which you could barely even see Albarn, replaced with CGI representations of the band. While, I love they changed the stage to to a more live setting, the visuals must be equally as important as the performances, because this is, of course, a digital band. After this, they both expressed that a future Gorillaz album is "unlikely".
Damon Albarn had some time to kill. So he made a solo project. Titled, "Everyday Robots", it was... sad. But boringly sad. It was a blend of shades of sad, but instead of a beautiful mess, it was just simply a mess. It was too dreary for its own good. So dreary, in fact, Damon decided to pretty much stop the solo stuff for a while, and went to see what his bands were up to. He released another Blur album, and it was pretty good. A nice little return to form for Albarn and Blur. After this, he tried patching things up with Hewlett, and after some talks, they decided to do a brand new album. Fans rejoiced, hell, I rejoiced. I love these guys. These guys are some of my musical heroes. They helped me form my hip hop taste, my love of different genres, finding new artists, and how beautiful different contributions can be. So, I was excited, like everyone else. At first, they released some playlists, which were awesome, and some "stories", showing what the band was up to in between "Plastic Beach", and this new record, and it was even more awesome.
Then BOOM. A new music video! "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clemintine, and I think the track is pretty damn good. The vocals are so haunting and effective, thought the actual instrument is show and daunting, but for effect, as it has some underlining political messages, mainly about Trump. As the music video takes places IN Trump Tower. I mean, for a Gorillaz song, I thought itwas odd even for them. THEN ANOTHER BOOM. The singles were out. Four of them to be exact. I instantly listened to them. "Ascension" featuring Vince Staples. YES. I love this song as the opener. "Andromeda" featuring D.R.A.M., just as great, it sounds better every time I listen to it. "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaaan, a little weird, but I love weird. "We Got The Power" featuring Jehnny Beth... eh, you can't win 'em all, it was a little too corny for my taste. A music video drops too! And it's awesome! However, something was bothering me a lot about these singles. I couldn't quite figure it out. I just kind of thought, whatever it was, would make more sense in the album.
It didn't.
So, I'm listening to this album, over and over, and over again. The overwhelming feeling I'm getting is... this does not feel like a Gorillaz album. Sure, it's weird, and it's from Damon Albarn, with Jamie Hewlett, it's technically Gorillaz, but I get no sense of the digital band nearly at all. It really feels like another Damon Albarn album, with a Gorillaz coat of paint. Gorillaz's music has always felt like the music was from the actual characters, there's a refreshing and unique edge to it. That doesn't really exist here. Damon obviously wanted to make this record, but did he go about this like he did with "Demon Days", "Plastic Beach", or hell, even the damn iPad album "The Fall"? Absolutely not.
Aside from the 4 singles, and a couple other tracks, "Busted And Blue", "Strobelite", "Charger", all of which I thought were great. "Busted And Blue" does the whole "Damon is sad" sound, but does it in a way I actually like. "Strobelite" is just so jumpy and cool. And "Charger" just sounds damn incredible. These are the tracks that bring me back to the Gorillaz I love. However, after these, I'm instantly taken right back out. I either HATE something about the other tracks, or I just straight up don't really like them. Take for example, "Momentz", I really hate the drum beat, I hate how unmixed most of it sounds, and I hate that De La Soul's colorful and awesome feature is basically drowned out by one of the ugliest drum beats I've ever heard.
My next problem I have with "Humanz" is that most of the features are either misplaced, bad, or used too little, where the feature would normally shine. This is probably the first Gorillaz album to have this problem, since the other ones before this one used the features almost perfectly, to amazingly perfect. Look at the track "Submission", why the hell is Danny Brown even in this song? As much as I love "Andromeda", but D.R.A.M. is barely in the damn song. I wasn't really feeling the entirety of "Let Me Out", nothing blended well at all. The last few tracks are pretty terrible as well. I actually hate "We Got The Power" every time I listen to it. Damon just seemed concerned with throwing in features wherever, to make it weird or psuedo-interesting, and it doesn't work at all.
Look, there's some songs I FREAKING LOVE. But there's also some huge problems that keep me from enjoying it all the way. It hurt me actually. I wanted to love this album, in fact, I was slightly hype after I listened to it half way through for the first time, but after the initial shock wore off, the flaws started to show.
Favorite Tracks: Ascension, Andromeda, Charger, Strobelite, Busted And Blue, Momentz if it ever gets fixed. lol.
Least Favorites: Sex Murder Party, and We Got The Power
6/10
"Humanz", is the newest Gorillaz album, a virtual band, created by musician Damon Albarn, and artist Jamie Hewlett. They released a few albums throughout the 2000's that changed the definition of a band, that proved you can blend genres and make hits from them, and they brought together so many artists that no one would even except to listen to. Each project has a "phase", a few awesome music videos, the band showed a lot of character, and it pulled through with all their songs, even the features. The first album "Gorillaz" showed what the band could do, "Demon Days" showcased what the band was capable of, "Plastic Beach" was the album that wore progression, or experimentation. I think what happened after, was sort of a downfall. "The Fall" came out shortly after "Plastic Beach", it was recorded on the Gorillaz World Tour, and was recorded on an iPad. While, it was nice to see a more stripped down, "raw" side of Gorillaz, I couldn't help but take this as a Damon Albarn album, but with "weird" production, to keep in tone with the Gorillaz sound. It didn't really work. After that, was the incredible "DoYaThing" single with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, and Andre 3000. Shortly after this, we heard of the falling out of Hewlett and Albarn. Hewlett described, he thought his contributions to the band were getting smaller and smaller. The band was getting bigger and bigger on the tour, but the visuals were starting to become less important. A vast contrast of the Demon Days tour, in which you could barely even see Albarn, replaced with CGI representations of the band. While, I love they changed the stage to to a more live setting, the visuals must be equally as important as the performances, because this is, of course, a digital band. After this, they both expressed that a future Gorillaz album is "unlikely".
Damon Albarn had some time to kill. So he made a solo project. Titled, "Everyday Robots", it was... sad. But boringly sad. It was a blend of shades of sad, but instead of a beautiful mess, it was just simply a mess. It was too dreary for its own good. So dreary, in fact, Damon decided to pretty much stop the solo stuff for a while, and went to see what his bands were up to. He released another Blur album, and it was pretty good. A nice little return to form for Albarn and Blur. After this, he tried patching things up with Hewlett, and after some talks, they decided to do a brand new album. Fans rejoiced, hell, I rejoiced. I love these guys. These guys are some of my musical heroes. They helped me form my hip hop taste, my love of different genres, finding new artists, and how beautiful different contributions can be. So, I was excited, like everyone else. At first, they released some playlists, which were awesome, and some "stories", showing what the band was up to in between "Plastic Beach", and this new record, and it was even more awesome.
Then BOOM. A new music video! "Hallelujah Money" featuring Benjamin Clemintine, and I think the track is pretty damn good. The vocals are so haunting and effective, thought the actual instrument is show and daunting, but for effect, as it has some underlining political messages, mainly about Trump. As the music video takes places IN Trump Tower. I mean, for a Gorillaz song, I thought itwas odd even for them. THEN ANOTHER BOOM. The singles were out. Four of them to be exact. I instantly listened to them. "Ascension" featuring Vince Staples. YES. I love this song as the opener. "Andromeda" featuring D.R.A.M., just as great, it sounds better every time I listen to it. "Saturnz Barz" featuring Popcaaan, a little weird, but I love weird. "We Got The Power" featuring Jehnny Beth... eh, you can't win 'em all, it was a little too corny for my taste. A music video drops too! And it's awesome! However, something was bothering me a lot about these singles. I couldn't quite figure it out. I just kind of thought, whatever it was, would make more sense in the album.
It didn't.
So, I'm listening to this album, over and over, and over again. The overwhelming feeling I'm getting is... this does not feel like a Gorillaz album. Sure, it's weird, and it's from Damon Albarn, with Jamie Hewlett, it's technically Gorillaz, but I get no sense of the digital band nearly at all. It really feels like another Damon Albarn album, with a Gorillaz coat of paint. Gorillaz's music has always felt like the music was from the actual characters, there's a refreshing and unique edge to it. That doesn't really exist here. Damon obviously wanted to make this record, but did he go about this like he did with "Demon Days", "Plastic Beach", or hell, even the damn iPad album "The Fall"? Absolutely not.
Aside from the 4 singles, and a couple other tracks, "Busted And Blue", "Strobelite", "Charger", all of which I thought were great. "Busted And Blue" does the whole "Damon is sad" sound, but does it in a way I actually like. "Strobelite" is just so jumpy and cool. And "Charger" just sounds damn incredible. These are the tracks that bring me back to the Gorillaz I love. However, after these, I'm instantly taken right back out. I either HATE something about the other tracks, or I just straight up don't really like them. Take for example, "Momentz", I really hate the drum beat, I hate how unmixed most of it sounds, and I hate that De La Soul's colorful and awesome feature is basically drowned out by one of the ugliest drum beats I've ever heard.
My next problem I have with "Humanz" is that most of the features are either misplaced, bad, or used too little, where the feature would normally shine. This is probably the first Gorillaz album to have this problem, since the other ones before this one used the features almost perfectly, to amazingly perfect. Look at the track "Submission", why the hell is Danny Brown even in this song? As much as I love "Andromeda", but D.R.A.M. is barely in the damn song. I wasn't really feeling the entirety of "Let Me Out", nothing blended well at all. The last few tracks are pretty terrible as well. I actually hate "We Got The Power" every time I listen to it. Damon just seemed concerned with throwing in features wherever, to make it weird or psuedo-interesting, and it doesn't work at all.
Look, there's some songs I FREAKING LOVE. But there's also some huge problems that keep me from enjoying it all the way. It hurt me actually. I wanted to love this album, in fact, I was slightly hype after I listened to it half way through for the first time, but after the initial shock wore off, the flaws started to show.
Favorite Tracks: Ascension, Andromeda, Charger, Strobelite, Busted And Blue, Momentz if it ever gets fixed. lol.
Least Favorites: Sex Murder Party, and We Got The Power
6/10
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