I was 10 years old when my parents broke up. My mother used to work in a gym and she wasn't able to take care of me or my sister so she hired a friend of hers to supervise us. Was at that point of my childhood where the husband of my mother's friend introduced me to the clip of Clint Eastwood as a way of cheer me up as the two of us shared a similar taste for music, it really worked out and the concept of a virtual band blew my brain up as NOTHING until that point. It was the visuals first that called my attention as a kid, but the music came after and this is what I made up from the album after years and years of digging into it.
It is still the case today that I'm not able to understand how such a weird record became a massive hit on its days and you can sense that weirdness from the very first minute. Re-Hash it's an upbeat track with a nice muddy acoustic guitar and dry drums that gives you a nice feeling while you aren't able to comprehend at all what's Damon singing about. It presents you a feeling that you'll hear all over the record which is a sense that I can only express with the word "grey" the whole record sounds like "grey" as the production is clean but muddy and no matter the rhythm of song, Damon always sings in a soulless fashion that, surprisingly, always works well. 5/4 sounds to me like an extension to Re-Hash, upbeat, muddy fashion, weird lyrics but it's vibrant, rustic and an absolute banger, but the mood changes quickly with one of the gems that the 2000's gave to us: Tomorrow Comes Today, a song that serves to me as the quintessential picture of depression at the beginning of the 21th century. Here, the lyrics become a little more concrete and there's not doubt that they pretend to send us a feeling of isolation in a new era of modernity and technological revolution at the sound of minimalist beats and a harmonica that it's catchy and sad at the same time. Top, top track.
Here the album takes a strange but solid turn that gives various levels of deepness to it with New Genius (Brother). The percussion is excellent, grubby and hypnotic and it's something that only Albarn can pull off so carefully detailed as this because it impress a wet and warm aspect to the album that you couldn't expect at all with everything you listened to this point but it just works well. Next stop is Clint Eastwood and because of its popularity and the fact that was the song which introduced me to the band I will honour it out of respect and just pass it out, there's nothing that hasn't been said about this song already and it's justified by all means!. Man Research is the closest thing to sit down in a vacant lot under a gray sky and take a bunch of hallucinogenic mushrooms with an empty stomach, I can't say nothing about the lyrics because they are utterly weird and the same goes to the instrumentation but the chorus with the "la-la-la-la" it's catchy and these dirty nonsensical sounds in the song are a very good picture about the whole sonorous identity of the record. Punk is a short banger that could last a bit more in my opinion because of how funny it is but Sound Check (Clapper) cuts the sadness quickly, it's a piece of space electronic music that stars with a broken guitar and Damon singing also in a broken-down fashion just to give entrance to a cumulus of spatial sounds that work together very cool and well.
Double Bass is a very curious instrumental that gives way to two of the biggest hits here in the shape of 19-2000 and Rock the House but I prefer to focus in the last one as I feel there is more comment about, it's funny, I like the way the drums a lot together with the blurry trumpet as they make sound the instrumentation as it came out of a videogame and the vocals of Del couldn't be cooler. Latin Simone it's of one the weirdest things Gorillaz ever did but either of the two versions are worth to be listened as it's a song strangely warm and dirty like New Genius.
As we get close to the end of the record, we find Starshine which I would portrait as how it would feel to hear someone tired singing with an out of tune guitar inside a pit. It's an unexpected song in the tracklist but I really like the darkness of it, it's lo-fi fashion and the fact that the lyrics seems like a pointless lament. Slow Country is a song that nobody speaks about and I find really, really enjoyable, the keyboard has a great hook and it feels fresh to this day. The chorus is addictive if you pay attention while you listen the track.
Everything ends in a high note with M1A1, an energetic track with drums that make me go nuts and a carefully crafted, endless intro at the rhythm of an exasperating guitar that evolves into an explosion of various and erratic "LA-LA-LA-LA HEY" and nonsensical lyrics that, anyway, work out well inviting you to stand up and shout to the ending of one the best albums produced in the first decade of this century.
The debut of Gorillaz is a strange, lo-fi oddity with an urban print that I don't how Albarn turned it into a massive commercial success he couldn't experiment with Blur (especially in USA) but anyone who appreciates a good record, should be glad he did. Dracula deserves a special mention as a bonus track of the album, a reggae song passed through the lo-fi filter of this record that deserves a listen definitely.
Thanks for reading!
