Gorillaz- The Mountain 10/10

Dawg, I fucking love this album. Gorillaz has always been one of those bands that I’ve really enjoyed since I was a kid, but this album in my opinion is one of my favorites by them. The joyful and infectious silliness of this project not only feels surprisingly well placed, but it feels like radical defiance to gloom and a strong resistance to hopelessness.

So the Gorillaz are a group of Cartoons that have somehow transcended across the drawn universe into our world through the power of music. They have transcended multiverses to share with us the gospel of Hip Hop, Alt Rock, Ambient soul, and in this case Hindustani Classical Folk music, which I really didn’t see coming. Like the last song I remember listening to from them was Cracker Island and that sounded like a crazy ass song that would open a dystopian wonderland with its sharp saw synths, aggressive punk bass lines, and thundercats spacey vocals in the back damn near symbolic to the souls that have been sacrificed in order to keep this theme park running. Which is crazy because before that you wouldn’t expect them to even have a sound like that because of their most popular tracks being Clint Eastwood and Feel Good Inc. sounding like hip hop punk songs with very dark, simple melodies that then expand and explode to make space for more bigger and more dramatic performances. So it’s safe to say that Gorillaz will never make a project that sounds just like their last one, which is risky because a lot of the time when artists do that it’s because they don’t have a creative foundation and future projects just end up feeling random and uninspired. I feared that would happen with this album, but I’m SOOOOOOOO glad I was wrong because this album is brimming with inspiration, cohesion, and in a lot of ways makes me excited for their next piece of work.

So the Album starts off with a fucking Black Thought feature, because clearly they love their listeners that much. But before we get to that the album pulls you out of your life and gently dances you into theirs with the Mountain. It shimmers with chimes, flutes, sitars, and so many bright noises from Hindu culture. And the video to this song pretty much details exactly what a sound track like this would look like. It details how a world like this is both looks in your mind, but also how a world like this can be possible. It doesn’t have to be a fantasy for people like you and me to consume, it can be something that we surround ourselves with. Something we can live in, feel sheltered by, feel healed by. Okay now we can get into the first song with the black thought feature. So the song starts with these heavenly strings and a bunch of folks talking in the background like it’s damn Dark side of the moon, and then drops into one of the most fire dance beats I’ve ever heard in my life. The song itself reads like a cleansing of fear, anxiety, and complete transformation. The chorus goes “ohh the things i swear I’d never become, and at the vastness of the river, in the cradled light they’ve done me.” I’m sorry but do you see this fucking poetry!? Like HUHHHHH? Literally talking about how your own imagination is the only thing stopping you from actually being what you’re destined to be. And it’s not to say you aren’t special, it’s to say that by yourself you are great, but together with the strength of the universe you can be legendary, a deity in human skin. Then the mother fucking beat switches and this nigga black thought gives us the best mother fucking verse of all time with Jalen Ngonda going back and forth with Jalen doing adlibs and Black thought filling in the blanks with his bars. It’s such a creative way to structure a song because typically the adlibs exist to fill in the blanks for a verse, not the other way around. I’ve never head of a verse being driven by its adlibs. That shit is crazy to me. And then you remember that this is the first song of a 15 song project.

So what we get after this peak ass intro is a song called the happy dictator with Sparks, which continues the audible theme of happiness and joy. It’s such a silly tune, it’s like listening to the intro song to a children’s show, but the children’s show is just your life. The thing i like most about this song is that it doesn’t just tell you “ohh just be happy, the world is so great”. No this song feels like a declaration of what you want, a defining system in which happiness prevails in spite of empire, fascism, and consumerism. A happiness that isn’t challenged by lack of imagination or feverish attempts at control, it’s one that feels the most honest and allows you to connect with people. “Oh what a happy world we live in” indeed. Music like this inspires action, it doesn’t convince you of anything or tell you how to feel, it’s patient and understanding, and gives you a path forward that you can forge yourself. Next we have The hardest thing with Tony Allen, and this takes a break from the upbeat drums to favor more ambient and spacey sounds. This song feels like you’re just floating in the sky looking down onto the pretty green earth from the spiritual plane of existence. This song is about letting go and saying goodbye to the people you love, which is so weird because it doesn’t do it in a sad way, not like there’s been a falling out, but a path that they must take in order for them to do what they need. It’s sad, but it’s not a sour feeling. This is confirmed with the song that follows called Orange County. It brings the upbeat drums back to accompany this bittersweet moment of detachment. With lyrics like “I’m not your enemy, your legacy frightens me”, it shows the feelings aren’t inspired by disgust or repulsion, but by a difference in perspective and journey. I could go through this entire album song by song, but I’m gonna just keep it brief and talk about my favorite songs from this album.

So i already told you about the first song on the album moon cave, but the song the manifesto is soooo good to me. It’s like Trueno snuck into the studio while the Gorillaz went on a bathroom break and told the instrumentalists to do the best reggaeton beat they could think of and then proof snuck down from heaven to be like “hold up lemme get in on this Gorillaz album too”. It’s such a spontaneous song, full of things that wouldn’t typically make sense, but absolutely do in the context of what the album symbolizes, and the proof verse just feels like such a humanized tribute to the now deceased rapper. It feels like you’re watching someone record a verse a random and they have this urgency like “dawg i need to get in on this and make this verse fire”. RIP proof, and thank you for your contribution to our culture. My next favorite song would probably be Damascus by Omar Souleyman and Mos Def (now going by Yasiin Bey). I mean we already had one rap legend on an album, but in the case of Gorillaz they was like “nah I’m Kendrick Lamar, it’s not enough i need 3 fucking rap legends on this album”. By the way Black thought has 3 features on this album, but I’m getting side tracked. Damascus starts off all spacey and beautiful, full of bright synths, robotic vocals in the back carrying the listener though time and space, then outta nowhere they drop this fire ass Arabic beat with this bouncy ass bass, and these wild drums. Shit feels like i just accidentally walked my ass into a festival and niggas was teaching me how to do the Dabke dances and shit. Yasiin and Omar go back and forth on this song from Arabic to English, and it’s literally the most lit shit I’ve ever heard. This is the kinda multicultural shit that I live for. Instead of niggas trying to be better than each other and flex, it’s a collective effort to express yourself and be who you truly are. Also I love that line from Yasiin Bey “Turkish Coffee Starbucks you’re corny”. It’s like hell yeah Yasiin Bey fuck Starbucks. The last song that’s my favorite is the empty dream machine, and it’s lowkey because I didn’t like it at first and then once it grew on me it became one of those songs I loved. It completely breaks from the optimism of the album and replaces it with confusion, lack of understanding, and embraced vulnerability. It’s also really funny because the chorus is like completely out of key, and it really does stand out, but the more you listen to it, the more it feels intentional. Because the song is detailing loneliness yeah, but also the confusion that comes with it, where you start questioning everything, where nothing makes sense and it doesn’t make sense because there’s no one to make sense of it with you. The loneliness of a song like this struck me because in all the happier songs the vocals are layers to the point of being damn near distracting, and this song has people singing one at a time, that is until the end which feels like the most vulnerable part of the song. It’s so fucking good.

So before I wrap up this review I wanted to talk about what really makes this album a 10. What really makes a 10 album for me in this instance. The timing of it is what makes it a 10 for me. So with the rise of AI art, AI artists, and just complete disregard for creative process, people got angry, they grew to hate damn near everything piece of art that didn’t completely give them what they wanted. It made so many people feel so inadequate, so hopeless, and just downright obsolete. It’s so horrible what the music industry has become with the rise of AI. What it’s been before all this. So when I heard this album, I’m not just looking at it through the lense of “real music”, it reminds me what this whole music shit is about: expression and community. Each song on here has like 12 features, which is a nightmare for labels, but an honor for the people. These songs go through sooooo many hands and you can tell that each and every person on it made this album special in their own way. This wasn’t just a Gorillaz album, it was a community statement. A worldly statement of the importance of all of us. This album could’ve easily been a “fuck you” to Ai or a fuck you to the music industry. Instead, it defiantly reminds us what we even do this music shit for to begin with. It’s to see different colors, perspectives, lives, and opinions through different avenues, social and political structures, and different souls. It’s not just an amalgamation of everyone collectively agreeing with each other, but a declaration of understanding everyone’s importance in this journey of music, both living and passed. Albums like this are so special and genuinely need to be cherished and shared far and wide, especially if you love music and you love seeing people come together to appreciate it.

Editor’s Note 3/10: I felt i had to add this paragraph after doing a bit more research on this album. So the album itself is so inspired by Asian culture because of the groups trips to India, and I learned that the specific name of the Asian classical music I was speaking to in the beginning was Hindustani classical music, so I changed the name where it applied. I also learned that two members of the band had their fathers pass away around the time this album was being made, which contextualizes ALOT of music that was written on this project. So i will say pardon me for my ignorance on this album because I want to go into things blind and then give my thoughts on what I’m listening to and what I appreciated the most, but also thank you for being patient with me because it’s very fun writing reviews. So I wanted to add this because I wrote a passage about Ai, not really knowing this album was holding SOOOOO much grief. I still want to double down on the statement because i believe using this album to bridge the gap between life and death through understanding of mortality as a whole is aligned with my statement about how this music shit is about understanding everyone’s importance in the journey. This album damn near brings artists back to life in order to solidify this message, but after dealing with something as striking and as heartbreaking as death, it would be easy to just lose yourself in the grief, anger, confusion, and despair that comes with it. At times it feels like the second you truly feel any of these emotions you spiral into a never ending cycle of pain that extends to everyone around you. Death can be very isolating, but when you’re around great people it doesn’t have to be. Death may be heartbreaking and painful, but that doesn’t mean you have to be. Also when I say that the joyful nature of this album feels like an act of defiance, i want to use the added context to double down on that statement as well. Typically when you’re dealing with topics surrounding death, the last thing most people are gonna be is happy lmao, like that’s some Erika Kirk shit. But with this album it feels like the happiness took time to get to. Like there was a whole lot of shit that had to happen in order to get to songs like Moon Cave. I’d understand if this album was a sad melancholic mess from start to finish, but i probably wouldn’t have walked away from this album with this perspective if that’s what that was. It would’ve been easier to just write a whole album full of sad, isolating, and really gloomy songs, but instead we got an enlightened, happy, well written, and vulnerable piece of work. Songs like the happy dictator aren’t out of place nor do they feel like the words of someone who naively thinks the world should just be happy because knowing what we know now, they’re grieving a death and also holding space for several others who are also grieving the loss of their loved ones. That takes a special kind of dedication, one that is insanely difficult. Defiance is difficult, that’s why no one does it too often. And defiance doesn’t have to be a thing you do that requires anger. In fact this album showed me how defiance, like love, is a perspective. How you do it is as important as the action itself. So if anything the added context makes this album so much better than i initially thought it was. I can’t wait to listen again.