Cracker Island - Gorillaz: Review
Gorillaz
are a group that really need no introduction. The genre-blending music project of Blur frontman Damon Albarn who has been weaving various styles and collaborators into infectious music for over 20 years. Cracker Island is the eighth album from the band and it follows 2020's Song Machine which was built around the collaborations it featured on every song.
Review by Lav:
My love for various Damon Albarn projects has never been a secret. I've often called Blur one of my favorite bands of all time, Plastic Beach was among my favorite albums of the 2010s, and Damon's last solo album The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows was one of my favorites of that year. But since 2010 Gorillaz have had a mixed bag of releases marked by forgettable moments like The Fall and The Now Now. Even though I think Humanz is over-hated, there's no denying that the second decade of Gorillaz wasn't as strong as their first. To me, this album should be called The Cracker Island because it follows in the footsteps of Fall and Now Now before it, applying solid fundamentals to a set of songs that consistently fail to take it to the next level.
The singles from this album did get to a pretty prominent start with the title track and opener Cracker Island. I loved the song as a single and I still love it here, Thundercat and Gorillaz are a match made in heaven. I even enjoy New Gold now a bit more than I originally did when it dropped as a single. I think it's perfectly acceptable within the tracklist here with exciting rap verses and a Tame Impala hook that's stuck with me more than I anticipated.
But from there it got a bit shakier starting with Baby Queen. It's a song that I think doesn't go far enough, which is a common theme on the album. It has some decent parts and some vocal melodies that I admittedly find pretty irresistible coming from Damon, but it also feels like it spends way too much time just playing out instrumental passages and repeating refrains into space. I'm still mixed, but more positive towards Silent Running which grew on me once I started to get lost in its space and all the little vocal flourishes layering on top of each other. Everything about it just sounds so wonderful even if it feels compositionally stuck in the mud in the second half.
The one single I haven't come around to much is Skinny Ape which starts off as one of the slower songs here but kind of erupts into this pummeling dance number in the second half while still holding onto the original hook. I actually like some of the individual pieces of the song but they never really come together into a cohesive song.
That danciness continues on my least favorite of the deep cuts, Tarantula. While some of the dancier pieces of instrumentation are fine it doesn't really add up to much of anything and the hook is the worst on the album. I also think The Tired Influencer is the most forgettable song here. It has a dreamy style that is at least pleasant to listen to but none of the instrumentation or refrains are all that strong.
While the collaborations among the deep cuts are all decent, none of them really reach the high standards Gorillaz have set for themselves. Tormenta is a decently experimental song with Bad Bunny whose vocals are as compelling as ever. It isn't one of the more significant moments on the record but it's a decently interesting venture. Closing track Possession Island features Beck but I wouldn't blame you if you missed that entirely. It's a pleasant finale but it once again fails to really elevate and become a great song that's all that worthwhile outside of the context of the record.
Aside from Thundercat my favorite collaborator on the record is Stevie Nicks who provides some surprising vocal chemistry alongside Damon on the track Oil. I love the cheeriness of the whole song and while it doesn't quite reach the conclusion I was hoping for it's still reminiscent of some of the group's brightest and most triumphant songs.
Unfortunately, despite having some good ideas in its mix Cracker Island consistently fails to do enough to turn its good songs great. Given how scant it runs and how much of even its brightest moments have some measure of forgettability, it's hard to see this standing out in Gorillaz discography long term. It's unfortunate to see the band follow-up their best record in a decade with another pretty forgettable outing, though the silver lining is that Damon Albarn's talent and vision is enough to elevate even an average Gorillaz record over so much of his contemporaries. 6/10
For more Damon Albarn, check out my review of Flume's Palaces here
