If there’s one thing we can do as well as we destroy the natural equilibrium of the planet through greed and excess, it’s hating on ourselves. So it’s a little disarming to find a cartoon band enlisting every famous singer ever to deliver a message about the potentially positive or at least value-neutral results of consuming lots of crap and remoulding the environment using the waste. Legitimate pop chameleon-genius Damon Albarn once saw a snake sleeping in a decomposing plastic bag on a dump, apparently. This may have been the road to Damascus moment.
It works as a metaphor though, in ways Albarn might or might not have anticipated. Hip-hop is music constructed from the recycled rubbish of previous generations, and though Gorillaz aren’t necessarily chopping up the Amen break themselves, they’re inextricably involved in the whole discourse. So, conceptually, let’s say Plastic Beach works. That’s a far cry from saying it provides the music to back up its weird headiness.
New territory is broken, especially through the retained services of an orchestra, but the best stand-alone tracks are not necessarily experimental. Superfast Jellyfish, with the lazy, thoughtful rhyming of De La Soul and a pop hook provided by Gruff Rhys, becomes the plastic consumer product it parodies, making it a lot of fun to listen to. Lou Reed’s ruminations on new nature with Albarn warbling in the background are similarly entertaining.
But what Plastic Beach ultimately lacks, for all its conceptuality and postmodern confrontation of its own commodification and all of that kind of thing, is truly great songs of the sort that keep you hovering over the back button as they draw to a close. The first album had Clint Eastwood and Demon Days had Feel Good Inc. This album has nothing to rival either, and though it’s both interesting and pleasant to listen to, it’s working on more of a Gruff Rhys’ Candylion level than that of a pop blockbuster which, given how established they are, what they’ve shown they can do and the fact that Snoop Dogg is on this album, you can’t help feeling it should be.
Words: Karl McDonald
