Label: Parlophone Records
Release: 2011
Length: 6:50
Rating: 4/5
After their last record, the hip-hop-flavored Plastic Beach, which realistically got pretty overlooked (before that, the albums Gorillaz and Demon Days had us bombarded on pretty much every music channel, while now there are far fewer videos), the collective of mysterious, forever enigmatic musicians, who bet on intangible projections and really juicy pop, decided to take a step forward. During the tour promoting that last record they cut yet another album – The Fall – and found their escape from the touring routine. This single is part of that whole, bringing the melancholic voice of fragile Damon Albarn back to the old path once more: hypnotic storytelling and lullabies of pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H58x-4xFnTY
Grandiosity is exactly the thing we’ve fully soaked up in pop, accepting the norms of a somewhat more pretentious surrender to mainstream clichés, and we haven’t felt even a smidge bad or cheap about it. Gorillaz are well schooled and skilled at this kind of sensory manipulation, and the grandeur still hides in carefully polished details. This time there’s obscenely little to chew on – just two short but really well-built tracks. The single opens with Revolving Doors. A song that recalls the Blur catalog more than Gorillaz, it’s a truly brilliant peak of their songwriting, though of course you can’t escape comparisons with the really big, more famous hits – say Stop The Dams, the brand-new Hillbilly Man or Dirty Harry … A trend is emerging that’s getting more and more obvious: every Gorillaz record is tailor-made for one of the core characters of the imaginary lineup. The debut Gorillaz showed the colors of Russell Hobbs, Demon Days the heart of guitarist Noodle, Plastic Beach is entirely Murdoc’s domain, and The Fall belongs to the sensual, sensitive Stuart 2D Pot. The tetrahedron of characters is presented in a really lovely, mystical (almost mysterious) way. “Revolving doors in London to a foggy day in Boston… / I feel that I’m paused by all the pills / I seem to run out here / Revolving doors / It’s stormy on the eastern sea board / He got silver up his night / He paid up for three / But got only two” sings Stuart’s fragile, dreamy voice, while the rather scattered, mosaic-like lyrics become one, in a really delicate way, with the natural flow of hypnotic guitars and calm drums. It’s Albarn’s touch – those recognizable, sweet-sounding vocal cords swaying in a comfy low register, relaxed rhythm and thin layers of lovingly tended sound – that holds all the aces that make Gorillaz’s brilliance hard to dispute. Following up with Amarillo doesn’t break the commandment of total resignation and the zen-like softness of perfect peace. The song, which in its slow but (as they themselves stress) euphoric way works like a balm for the soul, serves up Damon’s slightly reverbed vocal in the best possible way. Brit pop has radiated out of earthly spheres into the intergalactic sector of slowly flowing time. “The mountains all over / are waiting, / For kingdom come. / I got lost on highways / But don’t ask me where I’ve been / Or what I’ve done. / Oh Lord, send me transmissions / Forgive me / for what I’ve become / The sun has come to save me. / Put a little love into my / lonely soul… / The sun has come to save me. / Put a little love into my / lonely soul… / Oh don’t you know why / You need more love? / It’s no desire” is the entire lyric, creeping unobtrusively and above all effortlessly through the pores of the song’s repetitive, rocking rhythm. There’s nothing too much on the track and nothing missing. Is it just another string of happy accidents, or is pure genius at work? I’m leaving that question entirely up to you again, while I’d rather abstain from such judgments in the name of beautiful, eternal music.
As I already wrote about the excellent DVD Slowboat To Hades, with their sense of perfection Gorillaz blow past the narrow criteria of the pop-culture offering and spoil us rotten to the extreme, and I stand by that verdict today. . If you’re a fan of modern pop, even after this act of disembodying music and moving it into the binary world of downloads you can end your life happily and reach a new ecstasy. And even if you’re not used to that side of the musical spectrum, it’ll still catch you on a drive in your car, and I guarantee you won’t veer off the road and die in agony choking on a huge, indigestible pop bone. Gorillaz are masters of mainstream meditation, and let’s hope this move doesn’t mean gradual sublimation or a farewell and exit behind the curtains of music history.
Lineup
Stuart “2D” Pot – lead vocals, keyboards, melodica, rhythm guitar
Murdoc Niccals – bass guitar and rhythm machine
Noodle – lead guitar and backing vocals
Russel Hobbs – drums, percussion
Cyborg Noodle – lead guitar
Production
Damon Albarn & Stephen Sedgwick
Tracklist
1. Revolving Doors
2. Amarillo
