ALBUM REVIEW: Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
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As I began my adventure through Plastic Beach, I had zero expectations. I just knew it would be different than your average “listening to an album for the first time” experience. This was gonna be a trip. And it was.

It started with the “Orchestral Intro” which made me feel like I was about to watch a movie in 3D. If my speakers had THX, it would have been intense. I pictured the Na’vi people prancing through my living room touching things and making them glow. Then, all of a sudden, it turns into a slow drive down a beach lined highway with Snoop as your guide. It’s a fantastically funkadelic joy ride. If Snoop Dogg were sitting with me listening to the album, he would have definitely approved of the state of mind I was in while listening to it.

After the Snoop Dogg sesh, it’s back to Pandora, except it’s not Pandora, it’s Plastic Beach, a place equally as fascinating and as interesting. It’s a soulful lounge at times and an electronic playground at others. It’s part digital realm and part discotheque. Plastic beach is the soundtrack playing inside a video game that only the characters inside the game can hear. I had all kinds of fun in my head listening to this. I was amused and moved at the same time.

There are a few tracks that I thought were ridiculous though. I really didn’t like “Superfast Jellyfish.” I thought it was the moron of the album. But hey, I know to someone else out there it might be the best song ever. That’s what scares me about this world ; ) I was also a bit at odds with “Empire Ants.” Until…until it hit the 2 1/2 minute mark. At that point, it opened up and became another kind of song entirely. I started to feel its vibe. It felt good.

The eclectic cast of characters is what really defines Plastic Beach. It’s these guest stars that really give it color and help create its hodgepodge of a mood. Snoop Dogg and Lou Reed. Need I say more? Lou Reed especially is one of my favorite parts of the album because he’s so typical Lou Reed in a left-of-center world. Almost brilliant. Like most of the album is, if you get it.

Plastic Beach is really a trip. Literally. It’s a trip in the figurative sense and also quite literally. I felt like I traveled to at least a dozen different locations while I was listening to this Album. I went to Pandora, I went inside a video game, I went to a cold, wet cinematic dungeon, I went on an acid trip…

Now, before you start thinking it was the high-grade medical marijuana that I may or may have not smoked, it wasn’t. Plastic Beach is meant to be a transport to other realms. The beauty of Plastic Beach is the power it has over the mind auditorially.

Did I mention that Plastic Beach is a total trip?

I loved the experience of listening to Plastic Beach. It kind of reminded me of Moby’s “Play,” which I love to this day. It goes well with whimsy and dementia and it played out like a mildly schizophrenic David Lynch movie in my head, set in Pandora.

My favorite tracks:

• “Glitter Freeze”
• “Some Kind of Nature”
• “Cloud of Unknowing”

Editor’s note: Check out their postapocalyptic, Mad Max style video for Stylo, featuring none other than Bruce Willis. Click here!