This is Cracker Island, the new Gorillaz album

This is where Gorillaz has landed, 25 years after they were born. Created by singer Damon Albarn (“Blur”) and illustrator Jamie Hewlett (“Tank Girl”), the world’s first virtual band is nothing short of a grand sensation in the pairing of Brit-Pop soul and comic book aesthetics. Nothing has remained less than a small miracle over the years, because their multimedia art has never exhausted the cleverness of the idea, but has always extended in the openness of approach, as also seen in “Cracker Island”, that eighth album, which will be released on Friday – but also As a reminder that the highest levels of the project were apparently reached early on.

Gorillaz’s masterpiece – and the true end ten years later

What began with the self-titled debut and hits like “Clint Eastwood” seems to have already been completed after Satan’s Days masterpiece ten years later with “Plastic Beach.” The Gorillaz have brought all kinds of celebrities with them, from Abraham Ferrer to Snoop Dogg, from Neneh Cherry to Bobby Womack, and from De La Soul to Lou Reed and Ike Turner. They’ve expanded their melancholy pop foundation, dominated by Damon Albarn’s vocal, to include hip-hop and funk, dance and jazz, drum machines and children’s choirs, ukuleles, and string ensembles – and released charmingly animated accompanying videos featuring virtual Gorillaz – showcasing four of each them on an adventurous trip.

The world around them has always seemed strange (“Last Living Souls”), decadent (“Babes In Arms”), directly or symbolically on their way to destruction, at most in human interaction sometimes “Feel Good Inc.” —but otherwise I wonder not, if the mushroom cloud that kept popping up again and again hadn’t put an end to it, everything must end hopelessly on an island made of plastic floating in the ocean: “Welcome to the World of Plastic Beach.” What was there to come?

Perhaps it would be more correct to ask: what is left? Because it seems so important to a continued existence that Damon Albarn has continued to enjoy making hits despite all his other projects like the all-star group The Good, Tha Bad & The Queen, the Blur revival or even two solo albums that were just him. Gorillaz songs – and now he is able to call himself a celebrity whoever he wants. Meanwhile, the following have appeared on other albums with more great videos (especially recently for “Song Machine, Season 1: Strange Timez”): George Benson, Elton John, Robert Smith of Cure, Grace Jones, Benjamin Clementine, St. Vincent, Fatoumata Diawara.. .

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These Guest Stars Join Gorillaz on ‘Cracker Island’

So far on “Cracker Island” (plus better animated videos) there are celebrities named Beck (“Looser”) and Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac), Tame Impala, or the dazzling guitarist Thundercat in the title track. And the motto he copied from Groucho Marx: “Blessed are the Orientals, for they will let in the Light…” — Blessed are the cracked, split and broken cracks, for they will let in the Light…

Because this diverse quartet actually symbolizes making the reality of our concept comprehensible from the periphery. In “Cracker Island,” however, there is little as incisive clarity as the somber social media contemplation of the “tired influencer.” Most of the time, the words get lost in the loose streams of ideas and become pure, atmospheric poetry. Sometimes the title song takes you to the dance floor (in the video, by the way, you go to a psychiatric ward), Albarn’s ego 2D sings about his melancholy as “Skinny Ape,” sometimes using electro-pop pads to Booti Brown’s rap as in “New Gold”, sometimes it deviates from the Latin ballroom “Tormenta”, sometimes there is also a very simple pop beauty like “Baby Queen”, sometimes “Silent Running” invites you to beautiful funk …

None of this implies a new Gorillaz sensation, it’s just a continuation of the phenomenon, like everything since fourth album, “The Fall,” now in a new tonal mix. However, “Cracker Island” shows how lucky the pop world is that this band that never really existed actually still exists.