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”).

He wrestles with the fallout of a Trump White House most explicitly on ‘Ticker Tape’, the Simon hook-up included in the bonus edition of the LP. But even when not referencing the election, an air of foreboding hangs heavy on a collection even more ominous than 2010’s environmental-apocalypse themed Plastic Beach.

What Humanz consciously fails to do is push into unexplored musical territories. Quite the opposite, in fact — this feels like a poised and stately rephrasing of Gorillaz’s founding sonic principles. Dance and hip hop are meshed on ‘Let Me Out’, where rapper Pusha T shares the podium with blues maven Mavis Staples, while Albarn, who has previously worked with Neneh Cherry and Bobby Womack, continues to advocate on behalf of vintage pop stars by having Grace Jones belt out ‘Charger’.

The best song goes to Savage’s Jehnny Beth, who flings herself into the defiant, ‘We Got The Power’. She conjures a punk spirit that chimes with the urgent grooves Albarn has assembled. It’s a near-perfect moment on an album that takes its time to achieve lift-off, yet ultimately soars towards dazzling heights.