Live Report: Gorillaz triumph in Dublin

Fresh from a barnstorming performance in Belfast, Gorillaz’ two-night Dublin stand is testament to Damon Albarn’s ongoing appeal to different generations. The audience at the group’s first date crosses the whole spectrum, from kids and teens to twenty-somethings, and those of us in middle age present when Blur played – gulp – fully 30 years ago at the RDS on the Great Escape tour.

It’s fair to say Albarn has kept busy in the interim, and he arrives in Ireland with Gorillaz now bigger than ever, their latest album – the wonderful The Mountain – having enjoyed huge acclaim and topped charts internationally, including in Ireland. Although it retains the frontman’s characteristic melodic flair, The Mountain is the emotionally rawest album of Albarn’s career, a deeply affecting and sometimes profound meditation on grief (he has lost his father in recent times).

As befits the tone of the record, in the early stages of the gig, the singer has a calmer, more reflective presence than the tornado of energy he usually unleashes during Blur sets. Still, given Gorillaz’ formidable catalogue, the sheer range of musical invention – backed by Jamie Hewlett’s mesmerising animations – easily generates a kinetic spark.

The highlights come thick and fast, from the stirring overture of The Mountain’s title track, through the sardonic commentary of the ‘The Happy Dictator’ (featuring footage of Kim Jong Un in amongst the cartoon imagery and footage of collaborators Sparks), and the haunting, dub-influenced ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’.

With its atmospheric clips of night-time city streets, the latter – for me the greatest Gorillaz song – comes off as genuinely visionary, a 2000 release that anticipated the futurist nocturnal soundscapes of Burial and the grime movement. Elsewhere, after rapturously greeted versions of tracks like ‘19-2000’, ‘The God Of Lying’ (featuring Idles’ Joe Talbot, who signs off with an enthusiastically received “Fuck the king!”) and ‘On Melancholy Hill’, the show cranks into higher gear for the final stretch.

First, there’s an electrifying take on 2010’s ‘Stylo’, led by rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def). For The Mountain, Albarn dug into the archives to utilise recordings by late collaborators like Dennis Hopper, Mark. E Smith and Tony Allen, in keeping with the record’s theme of mortality. In that context, hearing the voice of Bobby Womack – who passed away in 2014 – unleashed on ‘Stylo’ is truly goosebump-inducing.

Backed by a rip-roaring footage of Bruce Willis in a car chase shoot-out, it’s absolutely epic stuff, my only note being that Albarn’s inspired original idea – to have the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb sing the ‘Stayin’ Alive’-influenced “Coming up to the overload” parts – is one of the great “what if?” moments in recent pop cultural history.

As well as the hurt of losing loved ones, another theme on The Mountain is the current tumultuous political landscape, reflected in the band wearing military garb (albeit paradoxically adorned with peace signs). Although it’s an older track, there’s no mistaking the resonance ‘Dirty Harry’ – which gets everyone up and singing along with rapper Bootie Brown – has in today’s climate, with lines like, “I need a gun to keep myself among / Poor people who are burning in the sun / But they ain’t got a chance”.

It’s a glancing blow in tonight’s show, but it’s so much more ominous and powerful the sledgehammer approach favoured by acts. The crowd are now sufficiently softened up for the knockout punch, which duly arrives in the encore with the climactic one-two of ‘Feel Good Inc’ and ‘Clint Eastwood’.

A performance that reflected our current cultural and political moment, and also emphasised the importance of celebrating departed loves while acknowledging the pain of loss, this was magnificent stuff – and another triumph for Gorillaz, and particularly Albarn, one of those very special artists who never lets us down.