My favorite review of Plastic Beach...

Alexis Petridis' review of Plastic Beach reads almost as if he somehow telepathically read my mind, and made what I was thinking coherent; using language, sentences, and proper grammar. I think Alexis Petridis should be the ghost writer of my opinions from now on.
He brilliantly describes exactly how I'm feeling about Gorillaz:

"Never quite as hilarious as its creators thought it was, the conceit about Gorillaz's records being made by a quartet of cartoon figures is beginning to look exhausted. "I'm so fucking bored of drawing those characters," protested Albarn's creative partner, artist Jamie Hewlett, recently, and indeed, seeing it dragged out over eight pages of a recent edition of a rock magazine, it's hard not to concur: journalist drugged and kidnapped by bandleader Murdoc; album funded by arms-dealing to third world dictators and recorded on a floating island made up of the world's rubbish; one member replaced by a robot. Jesus, give it a rest, will you?"

You know what? As sacrilegious as it may seem, I am a bit over the cartoon character shtick. It seems almost too much, a bit overwhelming. Especially for someone who occasionally likes to blog about every single thing Damon Albarn does in detail. I love this album, but I don't really care one bit if Noodle is a robot or not. I think that's what made Monkey: Journey To The West so cool. Jamie got to explore his creativity just as much as Damon did. It seems that with Gorillaz, Damon gets to reinvent and innovate as much as he wants, but poor Jamie is stuck in some sort of groundhog day nightmare; having to draw Murdoc ad infinitum.

It's not all negative, in fact Alexis' review is as glowing as one could ever hope for. His take on the 90's britpop war between Blur and Oasis should be the definitive description of what went down, it's so funny...and so true:

"If you favoured Oasis during the Battle of Britpop, it's also hard not to suffer a pang of regret: you feel a bit stupid, like an early-70s record buyer who somehow came to conclusion that Showaddywaddy were better than Roxy Music."

Brilliant. Ha! That's exactly it. Thankfully, I was always on team Blur, which left me a bit lonely as all my friends were team Oasis and would belt out "Wonderwall" on the recreation field. Meanwhile, I was etching the lyrics to "For Tomorrow" on the bottom of my Tintin pencil tin. Yeah, I think we can see who was cooler in retrospect... me, right?

Talking about Roxy Music, I think the one glaring omission from Plastic Beach's roster of big name guests is Bryan Ferry. Come on, he would've fit right in. Damon did get the one person who might be just as grumpy, Lou Reed to grouch all over "Some Kind of Nature". Alexis' description of that anomaly is spot on too:

"You can't help but be impressed by Albarn's apparently limitless powers of persuasion, given that he's also somehow managed to get Lou Reed to add his ornery tones to a jaunty piano-plonking bit of whimsy called Some Kind of Nature. The effect is deeply incongruous, like Robert Mugabe turning up on an episode of Big Cook Little Cook and making a dragon out of a croissant."

Plastic Beach is weird, fantastic, wonky pop. Damon is the master. We should all bow down to his brilliance. Alexis agrees:

"That said, what is here does enough to underline the fact that Albarn is the only artist from the whole Britpop imbroglio to whom you could attach the word genius without causing widespread mocking laughter. He's certainly the only one with this kind of kaleidoscopic musical ambition. At one extreme, there's Empire Ants, which opens with a gently pattering drum machine and one of Albarn's languidly melancholy melodies, then unexpectedly explodes into glittery disco. At the other, there's Sweepstakes, spectacularly off-kilter, brass-powered hip hop featuring Mos Def."

Alexis gives the album 4/5. I would say it should get...oh, I don't know 6/5. But I'm not given to objectivity where Damon is involved.

Read the entire review, get involved, leave a nice comment.

[Guardian]