Review Summary: For Tomorrow: A Guide to Contemporary British Music, 1988-2013 (Part 91)
From 2003 to 2008 your record company couldn’t do half as much for your new single as Apple could. By featuring new songs by artists both well known and unknown in its ubiquitous silhouette TV spots, Apple both moved shedloads of iPods and launched the careers of artists from Feist to Fratellis and, in 2005, it helped Damon Albarn do something nobody could have predicted when he formed the Gorillaz after the Blur implosion, almost completely overshadow his former band.
“Feel Good Inc.” represents the apex of the Gorillaz project in that it allowed Damon Albarn a space to create an alt-rock-rap song that featured 90’s rap legends De La Soul and then make that song into a global smash hit. Pretty impressive for a guy that had been hamstrung until this point by that “woo-hoo” song. Already equipped with a massive bassline and a stop-you-dead chorus, “Feel Good Inc.” was a top-tier Gorillaz song until De La Soul drop in out of nowhere to vault it into the top spot. Sensing their chance at a breakthrough moment, De La Soul lace the track with a verse composed entirely of hooks, none more effective than their closing “Steady watch me navigate/Ha ha ha, ha”, that complement the already catchy choruses perfectly and make the song irresistible enough to take it to the US top 20.
If everything on
Demon Days was as good as its lead single, it would be an unmitigated triumph. As it is though, it’s a strong work that falls into many of the same pitfalls as its self-titled predecessor. That is, total brilliance surrounded by barely there sketches.
Danger Mouse produced
Demon Days and he basically picks up where Dan the Automator left off, making everything sound right at home booming out of the 8-track player of a tagged up Humvee, rattling through the desert. His most notable contributions are on the low end of things, the tough boom-bap of “Kids With Guns” or the loping breakbeats of “Dirty Harry”, the latter of which is also notable for having one of the least hokey uses of a childrens choir in pop music history. Meanwhile, Albarn is up top spinning more of the sad-bastard melodies that have been his stock in trade since 1997’s
Blur and, aside from chippy-disco “DARE”, he remains comfortably within his wheelhouse on
Demon Days. His hooks are more obvious here than they were with Blur but his light touch means they stay rewarding without being blatant.
Demon Days is a nearly even split between the great and the not-so-great. You get the rainy daydream drift of “El Manana” and the buzzy dub of “Every Planet We Reach is Dead” but you also get the barely there melodies of “O Green World” and the insta-skip spoken word “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head”. Sequencing doesn’t help things either, with “O Green World” ruining what would have been an epic eight song opening run and a smattering of distinctly lesser tracks (“White Light”, “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head”, “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”) obscuring latter album highlights “DARE” and closing number “Demon Days”.
Beyond its qualities as an album though,
Demon Days serves a higher purpose which is being one of the greatest “first albums” of all time. This album sold like gangbusters, earning certifications just about all over the world and actually selling more copies in the US than the UK. With that many copies in circulation and its eclectic selection of guests,
Demon Days opened a lot of minds to whole worlds of music. Most followed the straightest line backwards from Gorillaz into Albarn’s work with Blur, others who only had “Feel Good Inc” on their shiny new iPods were urged to check out De La Soul. Those with the album could trace Bootie Black or MF Doom’s verses into The Pharcyde and
Madvillainy. Anglophiles followed the thick accents in “All Alone” and “DARE” and found Roots Manuva and the Happy Mondays. Particularly adventurous linear note crawlers discovered Neneh Cherry and Martina Topley-Bird. With all that inside,
Demon Days becomes quite a healthy treasure chest of artists to discover and, even beyond the great music it produced, that might be the ultimate success of the Gorillaz project.
