Gorillaz - Demon Days

Last week saw the release of the second proper Gorillaz album, Demon Days. I'm dead chuffed, because I loved the debut album and was afraid the band was never going to move beyond those songs - especially when you consider the odds against them; a cartoon band side-project of Damon Albarn and his mates.

The two albums released between the eponymous debut and Demon Days, G-Sides and Laika Come Home, whilst being good, haven't given us anything new. G-Sides was a collection of singles' B-sides, and Laika Come Home was a rather excellent dub remix album by Space Monkeys - good tracks throughout, but nothing new to get excited about.

Then, at the start of 2005, a white label 12" appeared in DJs' record boxes. This was Dirty Harry, the first new material to appear from Gorillaz in a gazillion years - and it was splendid. This was followed by their most recent single proper, Feel Good Inc, where De La Soul joined in on rapping duties and Albarn crafted a song reminiscent of The Kinks in places. And now... the album it has all been leading up to.

And it's a cracker.

Absolute most favourite track of all is DARE, a bizarre little pop song featuring Shaun Ryder on vocals, and without a doubt a candidate for a single release. On the album this is followed by a deeply bizarre collaboration - Dennis Hopper provides his voice to the narative in the spacey, dreamy Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head. This track flows into Don't Get Lost In Heaven, and then into the title track, Demon Days (the final track on the CD). These last two tracks have shades of Mercury Rev about them, and are gorgeous.

Other favourites are Kids With Guns, with a lovely, chugging bass and Neneh Cherry providing backing vocals in the chorus, and the aforementioned singles. That said, like the first album, there isn't actually a single bad track. This time, however, the album feels like a whole 'thing', whereas the first one was more varied in genres. And a few tracks sound so much like tracks from Blur's Think Tank you can tell that Albarn wasn't sure which group should get to perform them.

The whole album is topped off, for me, by the very first track (simply called Intro) which is based around a loop taken from the track Dark Earth by Jack Trombey. This track would mean nothing to anyone except for fans of either deWolfe's library music or the film Dawn of the Dead - I fall into the latter category, and I knew that Albarn does as well from the quote at the start of the video for Clint Eastwood. The track gets used in the version of Dawn of the Dead most (UK/US) viewers have seen - George Romero used a ton of library music on his version of the film, which was replaced in European versions by a soundtrack recorded by the Italian prog-rockers Goblin for Dario Argento, who created the continental cut.

If I had to give it a score, I would. It'd be a high score as well. But this is my blog, so I'm not going to bother =)