CD Review: Gorillaz- Plastic Beach

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Grade: A

Tagline: The usual for The Gorillaz, which is the unusual.

If ten years ago someone walked up to you and said "Hey, you know what would be an awesome collaboration? That guy from Blur who sings that "Woo-hoo!" song and Snoop Dogg" you'd ask to have some of whatever it was he was smoking, unless it was meth. Fast forward to 2010 and it doesn't seem like such a bad idea, now does it?

Well that's because the "Woo-hoo!" guy, Damon Albarn, decided to branch out a little bit and start the Gorillaz. The fake band made with real musicians has recently released their third album, Plastic Beach, and while it's odd and different and nothing like you'd expect, it's still sublime, just like their first two discs.

In standard Gorillaz fashion, Plastic Beach is based in rock, but dabbles in hip-hop with a multitude of guests ranging from the aforementioned Snoop Dogg to De La Soul to Mos Def to lesser-known acts like Bashy and Kano. There's also a cameo from rock legend Lou Reed and, oddly enough, an appearance from The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. The diversity, impressive on its own, also lends enough variety to the music to make it worth spin after spin after spin.

Though the album lacks lows, some of the highest highs include "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach," "Some Kind of Nature," and "Sweepstakes." Each song, massively different from the song before it, shows Albarn's keen ear for pop music, putting together oddball mixes that just kind of work.

The best part about Plastic Beach is that's it's just the right kind of weird. It's odd but accessible since it's so close to pop music. Sure, Albarn may not need to get any monkey off his back, but this new Gorillaz album really is bananas.

Sorry, we held back on the primate puns as long as we could.

Sounds like:Mainstream pop on hallucinogens

Download:The whole thing

Listen to it When: You can get your hands on it.

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