Album Review: Gorillaz - Humanz: 'Record is as multi-faceted as anything Albarn has done'

Damon Albarn returns to Gorillaz — his “virtual collaboration” with comic writer, Jamie Hewlett — after several years swimming in dark and strange musical waters.

He wrote an opera, a surprisingly pastoral autobiographical solo LP, and a new Blur album (one of the rare comeback records by a storied pop group that is worth the time of day). All of which left him itching to do something “fast” and unburdened by expectations. So, he turned on his iPad and assembled the bare-boned outline of Humanz.

With contributions from artists as far-flung as Carly Simon, De La Soul, and Grace Jones, the resulting record is as multi-faceted as anything Albarn has done. It is also loosely conceptual, with the musician returning, over and over, to the shock he experienced the evening Donald Trump was elected president (“A night where everything that you believed in was turned on its head”).