Gorillaz are, in many ways, the pub conversation that went too far. On the back of a beer-mat, it’s certainly a perky conceit: a comic-strip band whose songs muddle genres with cartoonish chutzpah.
In execution however, Damon Albarn’s pet endeavour has too often tended towards debilitating smugness. Toxically pleased with itself, Gorillaz’s self-titled 2001 debut felt like an open-top tour of Albarn’s ego.
So extravagant were the Blur frontman’s abilities it seemed indiscreet to trumpet them this loudly. You staggered away, impressed by the breadth of his talent (and, courtesy of a flurry of cameos, the size of his rolodex) but reluctant to tarry long in its company.
With Demon Days, Albarn -and Gorillaz -stumble upon the creative potential of lowered ambitions. Unlike its predecessor, the record doesn’t strive to redefine the boundaries between musicians and their music. Its aims are far more prosaic: to fuse hip-hop and indie and produce the most compelling pop narratives of the year.
What strikes you first about Demon Days is how lavishly downbeat it sounds. As on Blur’s last album, Think Tank, Albarn has the air of a songwriter adrift, as though he has recently cultivated an ability for serious thought and is aghast at what lurks in the half-explored recesses of his id. Ten years after the Britpop party has Albarn’s post-Justine comedown finally kicked in?
Rescuing the project from itself is the ebullient cast of collaborators. Of these, the most notable is Danger Mouse, whose forays at the boundaries of hip-hop yielded 2004’s Beatles-blaspheming, mash-up masterpiece, The Grey Album.
Elsewhere there are feral turns from Shaun Ryder, apparently fully awake for the first time in a decade, and Dennis Hopper, who contributes a marrow curdling voice-over on ‘Fire Coming Out Of A Monkey’s Head’. Sweeping and sad, Demon Days is the sound of a million great ideas happening at once.