Gorillaz - Cracker Island

Whither Song Machine Season Two? It should always have been obvious that a mind so relentlessly creative as Damon Albarn’s (for it is he in case you weren’t aware) was never likely to stick to one idea for long.

Over the last decade or so the orchestrator of the virtual band has tended to release two Gorillaz albums in quick succession (generally each side of a tour), with the second album being less considered and bombastic.

The scrappily experimental The Fall (2011) was recorded on Albarn’s iPad during the Escape To Plastic Beach world tour in 2010, while The Now Now (coming hot on the heels of the sprawling Humanz in 2018) was something of a ‘solo’ album also recorded largely on the road.

Therefore, Cracker Island prolongs the general pattern although it’s a much more rounded and coherent piece work than the its bedfellows.

Albarn frequently smothers his themes and observations in Gorillaz under oblique references (and there’s plenty to be found here) but, when announcing the album, guitarist Noodle claimed it is, ‘the sound of change and the chorus of the collective’.

Meaning: the latest adventure for our cartoon heroes is joining a cult in California as metaphor for our collective reliance on technology, a topic with which Albarn has dabbled before (on 2014 solo album Everyday Robots) but offers rich ploughs to furrow.

https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/02/review-gorillaz-cracker-island/