{"id":501042,"date":"2026-02-26T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501042\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:17:08","slug":"gorillaz-the-mountain-review-a-late-career-peak-haunted-by-ghosts-yet-glowing-with-life-gorillaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501042\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorillaz: The Mountain review \u2013 a late career peak haunted by ghosts yet glowing with life | Gorillaz"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is 25 years since Gorillaz released their eponymous debut album. A project you might reasonably have assumed was a jokey one-off on the part of a Britpop star has instead lasted a quarter of a century, long enough for Damon Albarn<\/a> and Jamie Hewlett\u2019s concept of a \u201cvirtual group\u201d to seem less like a snarky gag at the expense of manufactured pop than oddly commonplace: their latest release is launched into a world where cartoon K-pop bands Huntr\/x and Saja Boys have collectively spent 100 weeks and counting on the UK singles chart, where the anime \u201cvocaloid\u201d Hatsune Miku is playing the O2 Arena and where celebrated producer Timbaland has launched an AI-generated singer called Tata Taktumi. Meanwhile, Gorillaz\u2019s oeuvre has sprawled to nine albums, involving something like 100 guest artists; they are the thread that links Carly Simon to Shaun Ryder, Skepta to Lou Reed and Bad Bunny to Mark E Smith.<\/p>\n

Perhaps inevitably, marshalling so many eclectic contributors has proved a challenge, even for someone as undoubtedly talented as Damon Albarn. Gorillaz<\/a> albums are seldom concise affairs and are of variable quality, thus tricky to navigate. The best ones are those unified by a strong underlying concept, as on Demon Days\u2019 glum survey of \u201cthe world in a state of night\u201d post-9\/11, or the ecological satire of 2010\u2019s Plastic Beach.<\/p>\n

The artwork for The Mountain by Gorillaz<\/p>\n

And so it proves with The Mountain, inspired in equal parts by a visit to India and the deaths of Albarn and Hewlett\u2019s fathers. Both seem reflected in the choice of guests. There are a host of Indian artists, from playback singer Asha Bhosle and eccentric space-disco diva Asha Puthli to a range of traditional musicians, including Anoushka Shankar. A sitar regularly twangs and buzzes (on The Plastic Guru, it twangs and buzzes in duet with the trebly guitar of Johnny Marr), a tambura regularly drones and the utterly lovely melody of the opening title track is played on a bansuri.<\/p>\n

A lot of names on the guest list are effectively speaking to the listener from beyond the grave: Albarn has returned to old recordings he made with the late Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, Mark E Smith, Tony Allen, and rappers Proof of D12 and Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul. Death is part of the album\u2019s sonic fabric, or more specifically, the sense that people live on after death. There\u2019s nothing eerie or lachrymose about the way Proof\u2019s guest verse bursts out of The Manifesto, or Mark E Smith snarls, slurs and cackles his way through Delirium\u2019s massive chorus. Their voices sound commanding and powerful.<\/p>\n

You might think you know what to expect from a Damon Albarn album informed by loss and grief. Melancholy is one of his trademark modes, expressed through the kind of wistful, descending melodies that liberally decorated Blur\u2019s last album, The Ballad of Darren<\/a>. Those certainly appear here \u2013 there\u2019s a particularly beautiful example on The Empty Dream Machine \u2013 but the album\u2019s overall mood is weirdly upbeat: post-disco boogie with lush cinematic strings on The Moon Cave; Bhosle\u2019s vocals soaring joyfully over The Shadowy Light\u2019s tinny synths; the Arabic acid house of Damascus.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If it sometimes feels like it\u2019s trying a bit too hard to put a positive spin on things \u2013 Orange County splices Albarn\u2019s crestfallen vocal \u201cthe hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love\u201d with a gratingly perky tune being whistled \u2013 the light and shade is more usually perfectly weighted. On The God of Lying, an ominous vocal from Idles frontman Joe Talbot is set over a gleefully chaotic low-rent reggae backing, to arresting effect. The Happy Dictator acknowledges the superficial appeal of being shielded from bad news \u2013 \u201cThe palace of your mind will be bright!\u201d \u2013 while underlining that those who might want to shield you from bad news invariably have a dark, ulterior motive. The Sweet Prince pictures Albarn at his father\u2019s hospital bedside \u2013 \u201cI was trying to say I love you, but you just looked the other way\u201d \u2013 but the music offers muted elation in a hazy swirl of harp, sitar and electronics, as if highlighting a theme that crops up over and over again in the album\u2019s lyrics, expressed in various ways and in different languages: \u201cLiving is the ending of the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the themes seem to tie The Mountain together. It feels more consistent \u2013 more like an album, less like a playlist constructed by someone with impressively wide-ranging taste \u2013 than its immediate predecessors: something you\u2019re more likely to listen to from start to finish than play with your finger ready to click fast-forward, panning for the best bits. The result is an unexpected career highlight, a quarter of a century in.<\/p>\n

This week Alexis listened to<\/p>\n

Goodbye \u2013 13a
Goodbye fits broadly in the category of shoegaze revivalists, but their second single leans closer to the Cocteau Twins than My Bloody Valentine: stately, elating, transportive and beautiful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is 25 years since Gorillaz released their eponymous debut album. A project you might reasonably have assumed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-501042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}