Damon Albarn plays revolutionary preacher as Gorillaz’s animated cast watches over Fort Worth from the screen behind him.

Blair B. Brown

Damon Albarn has spent nearly three decades hiding behind cartoons. On Friday night at Dickies Arena, he dressed like a revolutionary with a Che Guevara-style getup, complete with an actual Che pin on his jacket, and turned a Fort Worth arena into something between a temple and a rally. Gorillaz have always been a protest against genre. This time, the protest came with incense.

It has been four years since the virtual band last played North Texas with a stop in Irving in 2022. Since then, they have released two albums: 2023’s glossy “Cracker Island” and this year’s “The Mountain.” The new record grew out of grief. Albarn and band co-creator Jamie Hewlett lost their fathers around the same time, traveled to India and came back with bansuri, tabla, sitar and sarod. The Mountain Tour delivers that journey, shared with 14,000 or so fellow pilgrims.

A time machine and a poet

Deltron 3030 opened with a lean, 20-minute set of cyberpunk hip-hop. There was no overproduction, just headnod-worthy lines from a crew that predicted our dystopia back in 2000. They also teased their third album, due in 2027, with “Centuries.” The track opened with sci-fi beeps and garbled TV voices before settling into an old-school beat, while a recorded Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie sang the chorus. Consider that one emo transmission from the year 3030.

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Little Simz followed with 40 minutes of spoken-word poetry fused with rock muscle. She moved with total command, had the crowd shouting choruses back within minutes, and turned her 2019 track “Selfish” into the set’s high point. Plenty of fans walked in unfamiliar with her catalog. Few walked out that way.

The sermon from the floor

Gorillaz opened with red curtain visuals, an invitation into Hewlett’s universe. Then came “The Mountain,” a bansuri flute reaching skyward. The late Dennis Hopper narrated the close, resampled from outtakes of his work on “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head” from 2005’s “Demon Days.” Meanwhile, on the massive screens behind the band, the four animated alter egos — 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel — wandered an animated India that felt like “The Jungle Book” filtered through Studio Ghibli. Those screens ran all night, cycling through album-specific art, music video fragments and live footage of the band, each one a spiritual extension of the song it framed.

Albarn led roughly 13 musicians, similar to a rock orchestra in the spirit of Broken Social Scene. Yet he stayed the coolest man in the building. He can deliver the laziest vibe on Earth and somehow make everything around him louder.

“Okay,” Albarn said. “I know you’re in the mood.” Then “19-2000″ from the band’s 2001 debut exploded, and he walked straight into the crowd for the first of about five excursions. His mic cord stretched across roughly a quarter of the arena, with a crew guiding it over heads. He climbed into the seats. He signed autographs, posed for selfies and held up handmade signs. He never missed a beat.

Gorillaz bring their animated universe to life on The Mountain Tour.

Preston Barta for Dallas Observer

The highlights stacked up quickly. “Last Living Souls” landed as a communal question — are we, in fact, the last living souls? “Delirium,” a runway chant on the new record, became a full ritual live. “Kids With Guns” arrived with Warhol-style gun imagery and a pointed lesson, while “Stylo” with Bootie Brown brought the strut. The night’s most arresting moment may have been “The Sad God,” which found Albarn crooning like Sinatra doing “My Way” — a grief hymn with a cocktail in hand. He also spat a drink into a vapor cloud like a dragon who’d skipped the bar line.

Later, sounding very much like a man in a Che pin, he reminded the crowd, “I don’t come from here, but I know voting is very important.”

Damon Albarn reaches skyward as Gorillaz bring The Mountain Tour to Dickies Arena.

The encore opened with “Cloud of Unknowing,” the Bobby Womack ballad, before Del the Funky Homosapien stormed in for “Rock the House.” Bootie Brown returned for “Dirty Harry,” and then the inevitable arrived. “Clint Eastwood,” the song that started it all in 2001, erupted through the arena. Some 25 years on, it still feels like sunshine in a bag.

“What a very generous crowd,” Albarn said near the end. Fort Worth was indeed generous, yes. Gorillaz were more so. They delivered grief, joy, revolution and reverence in one surreal package, and they proved a cartoon band can still feel more human than almost anything else on tour.

If The Mountain Tour passes anywhere near you, make the climb. The view from the top is worth it.