It’s largely been my custom for this series to, instead of discussing the narrative concept of the album, to instead do a bit of an overview of what happened to Jamie and Damon during the phase. However this time I’m doing it different, because for whatever reason the concept of this album dawned on me much quicker than any of the previous albums, and so I will indeed let you know what I think the mystery is.
In 2015, Damon announced that he and Jamie had reconciled after whatever bullshit they went through and that a new Phase would take place after all. Now, a lot of people on the sub mistook this announcement for saying it would happen soon, and this, as everything on the internet does, came back to bite our boys as time went on.
So when it finally dropped in April of 2017, which was actually a few months sooner than I had predicted, it was met with a lot of anger. It was met with anger due to its repeated mocking of Donald Trump, which some people said was “too obvious” (for some reason). It was met with anger due to its sound not being “Gorillaz sound” (whatever the fuck that means). It was met with anger for being a “betrayal to the fans” (which was not how I felt about the album at all).
Now, I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, it’s not my fucking job to defend Damon Albarn. It’s not. I like him quite a lot both as an artist and a person, but I don’t sit around devising media strategies to salvage my beautiful boy’s reputation, because honestly, he’s one of the much acclaimed musicians of all time at this point and there’s not much anyone can do to take down his legacy.
But I’ve watched and listened quite closely to the criticism on Humanz. I’ve even seen the guy release a new song, one of the best in his repertoire, just to show he cares. Maybe people are upset due to the slowness of the pace of this Phase in terms of producing the music videos and the larger media campaign.
Which is absurd, because honestly they’ve released a lot of stuff, a lot of music, a lot of art. For free. It’s one of the most generous offerings by a band of quality material I’ve ever seen.
And on top of that… the tour. Oh my dear, we’re in the middle of one of the great rock tours of all time right now! Even with its issues, the bootlegs speak for themselves: Humanz was made to be performed on stage, and my god does this band kill it every single gig.
But still the criticism, the biting, baseless effing criticism I’ve forced myself to look at every goddamn day. “Too many collaborators” “no originality,” “obvious message”.
No.
No, today I make my stand. Today I jump my shark. I don’t care if you disagree.
Humanz is a 10/10. It is a masterpiece. The concepts it is discussing are frank and personal, as well as complex and moving. The delivery, i.e. the composition and production of these tracks is uncanny and beautiful, raw and powerful, delicate and exquisite. It’s exploration of the core concept of the cartoon band is brilliantly executed.
I could not love this album more. It is simply gorgeous in every way.
Like, the idea of talking about the loudness wars by having three songs that play with this very idea in the beat, (Carnival, Sex Murder, Collar) is just fascinating. The revival of the Afro-American renaissance of the early ‘90s, so powerful and true. Then there’s Damon’s own 3, where for an entire song on Andromeda, 2D manages to transform back into Damon…
This, if anything, is the most inventive and original album Gorillaz has put out. It deserves true acclaim for how daring the album truly is.
The album is about the ‘90s, which, if you weren’t there, had this really stupid thing called Y2K, where everyone thought there was going to be some kind of lethal bug in our machinery that would short out when the date arrived at 2000. It didn’t.
But in some ways, the world did end. It ended for the music industry due to the rise of the internet, and the free pirating of music that would sound the death knell of the whole shebang.
But the industry didn’t just fail because of the internet. The industry failed because it suffered from a lack of originality, which watered the product down from what it had been. The constant pressure by label executives upon their artists to pump out the same sounding albums over and over again led to a terrible stagnation in the arena of popular music, and for whatever reason, market forces had a hard time righting that ship.
There were a few artists who did end up surviving this apocalypse relatively intact, but the sad fact of the matter is that a lot of the musicians of the ‘90s died young.
They died in accidents. They died from murder. They died of drug overdoses. They died of suicide.
But they’re dead. Kurt’s dead. Whitney’s dead. Biggie’s dead. Layne’s dead. Selena’s dead. Chris is dead. Proof is dead.
Even before many of them died, their songwriting and musicianship had begun slipping, sometimes due to the pressures of their given field, but often due to years of hard abuse of drugs.
But, keep in mind, for them to have died, first they had to live. And these were the heroes who sprung up during this time: men and women of passion and vigor. They stood on the shoulders of their forbearers, and, while not always successful, they tried. They had their own identities in their music, laden with their hopes and dreams and beliefs, and despite their mercantilism, their goals were to enrich the lives of their audience.
If they hadn’t done their jobs well, then I likely wouldn’t be talking about them, would I? Their tragedy is that they never quite managed to become the force they had the potential to be.
There was one figure who seemed to avoid this problem. If there was a true king of the ‘90s, it was him, and his name was Beck Hansen.
Beck started out early. He achieved his first hit “Loser” released on March 8th, 1993. Loser was written during a low-point of Beck’s life, one where he was forced to slave away doing menial labor and performing at coffee shops basically just to keep practicing. His mother was one of Warhol’s Chelsea Girls, and even in his early work, Beck’s irreverence, firmly planted in the dada movement, was one of his defining traits.
But from that day on, Beck would never, never have to slave away like that again. Despite relatively inauspicious beginnings, it was already immediately clear that not only was Beck a tremendous songwriter, but he also had the makings of a great live performer as well. On top of all of this, Beck was also a really, really proficient musician in his own right, and he demonstrated time and time again the will to improve. So while Mellow Gold may not have showcased his popular charisma as much as it could’ve, 1996’s Odelaywould set the music world abuzz with just how inventive and exciting Beck truly was.
Beck’s fundamental irreverence was the core of his musical genius, and still is, really. In generating this persona, Beck was able to master the art of appropriation. Loser is basically just Beck making fun of the gangsta rap trend, saying instead of being a G, that he’s just a loser. Songs like Where It’s At and the New Pollution get at just how little substance people seem to be happy with in their relationships.
But what made him great, truly, truly great was that he was able to blend all of these different American genre together to tell this story of himself. To make it a great one. In acquiring R & B and Hip Hop elements, he became those things better in some ways than their straight-up genre artists. Beck was immediately a dynamo but his musical style was so heavily rooted in the foundation of classic American Blues that he could use any genre that came out of it to incredible effect.
And then, something truly special happened: Beck started getting better.
First he put out what many called the finest album of all time: Mutations. Mutations is perhaps the most honest of Beck’s albums, and it settles a very interesting debate in his music: throughout his early corpus, the concept of the identity of the singer is presented as a fleeting image. You’re never really left with a firm grasp of who Beck really is, only that he’s an individual without a ton of regard for the trappings of modern society.
But on Mutations, we are presented at last with Beck Hansen as we always knew him to be: Beck is primarily a very loving individual, who loves people very much and wants to give them comfort in what is a difficult and oft-confusing world. And, as if this very impetus of songwriting empowered him even more, so too did Beck’s poetry grow and become more dazzling with each composition.