Song Machine was a complete change of pace, with Damon and Jamie eschewing the traditional album rollout for a series of 'episodes' comprised of a standalone track built around the style and skillset of the song's feature. This resulted in the best crop of Gorillaz songs since Plastic Beach, but removed any of the broader themes and imagery the project is known for. A season 2 was in the works, but for some reason was scrapped in favour of a more traditional record, Cracker Island, that leaned back into the cartoon band's 'lore' for the first time in a while, but really didn't do much with it's occult theme and is honestly the most tired and by the numbers Gorillaz album yet.
The Mountain, is once again another switch in direction for the band, with the first rumblings of the record a couple of years ago claiming that it would be a spiritual sequel to Plastic Beach. And in some ways it very much is. The record is a big, ornate sounding album that is start studded with features, and has some core themes that run throughout without being too restrictive to date the album. But The Mountain is very much its own beast, with two distinct factors that really make it stand out from the previous Gorillaz cannon. The first is that, following on from a couple of trips to India that Jamie and Damon took, the record features a notable influence from traditional and contemporary Indian music genres - which is something entirely new to the band. The second is that the record features a core theme on death and the afterlife (inspired by both Damon and Jamie losing their fathers in the run up to recording), and such Damon has decided to dig the Gorillaz archives for recordings from previous collaborators who have since passed themselves. These posthumous features are all very tastefully included and to someone not in the know, would just feel like they were recorded for the album and not repurposed from sessions from decades past.
The record opens up similarly to Plastic Beach with a big ornate, orchestral intro. However in the place of the swooning strings of the Sinfonia Viva Orchestra is an ensemble of Indian and Indian-origin musicians playing a piece in the style of traditional Indian classical music. What results is quite an eery and mysterious opening to the record which leads into the next track, The Moon Cave, perfectly. The core of the The Moon Cave is textbook modern Gorillaz: dreamy, whimsical synthpop with a few extra elements thrown in to spice things up. The sitars and flutes continue on from the title track, and are meshed with the hazy synths and a beat switch up and hip-hop verse from Black Thought and the late Dave Joliceour of De La Soul. The track is pretty low-key, but has massively grown on me since release with the dreamy atmosphere and themes around going to 'the moon cave' as a sort of place to metaphorically wash yourself in the water there and let go of the past to make a fresh start.
The next song on the record, The Happy Dictator featuring Sparks, was released as the lead single and is the first of several that deal in the record's other major theme - that of power, control, autocrats and false prophets. Inspired by how Sapamurat Niyazov, the dictator of Turkmenistan from the dissolution of the USSR to his death in 2006, banned bad news in the country as a form of control over his subjects. The track plays into Sparks typical zaniness and pairs it with synthy Gorillaz sound, and because of that very much felt like a Song Machine off-cut on first listen. It certainly works well within the albums context, but I wouldn't say it is the strongest Gorillaz single out there. The God of Lying, featuring Joe Talbot of IDLES, falls into similar territory for me. The Track is built around a dubby off-kilter rhythm that feels like a softer Clint Eastwood, but lacks the punch and genuine weirdness that made the song stand out so vividly 25 years ago. Talbot is also doing his more dejected 'arty' approach to the vocals that has characterised the more recent IDLES records, but its a style I just don't think off he pulls off in much of an interesting way. His strength was always in the rage and fury of the early IDLES records, not this much more wordy, 'tasteful' approach. The song is by no means bad, but taken in isolation outside of the album just feels like an echo of previous Gorillaz highs.
The Hardest Thing and Orange County are a pair of songs that sit together between The Happy Dictator and The God of Lying, and follow more in the line of The Moon Cave revolving around coming to terms with grief and loss. They are a sombre and melancholic duo, with The Hardest Thing essentially serving as a triumphant woodwind and trumpet intro to the more poppy and uptempo Orange County. The songs are direct in their message about letting go of a mentor figure and the worries about living up to their legacy, and very much hit the spot - they feel very end credits-y. As the middle of the record approaches, the two themes start to meld together with The Empty Dream Machine, where Damon as 2D sings about the struggle to come to terms with grief and the desire to look for external solutions to the pain. The song has subtle Indian influences but is one of those moody, slightly autotuned R&B cuts that are always my least favourite on a Gorillaz album. It's fine but does nothing for me.
It's only when we get to The Manifesto that I feel like the album is doing something truly new for a Gorillaz record. The song is a seven minute, multipart banger that initially fuses Indian pop with Latin Rap courtesy of guest rapper Trueno, but then half way through flips on its lid into a hardcore hip-hop beat and a posthumous verse from D-12's Proof recorded when he was stranded in London with Damon in London in the wake of 9/11. The verse does feel slightly shoehorned in to fit the albums themes, but you can really feel the rage and fury in Proof's vocals that it doesn't really matter to me. The song then flips back into dramatic, dancey final section to close it out. The only song that goes nearly as hard as The Manifesto is Damascus, featuring Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bay (aka Mos Def). The song is built off demos from the Plastic Beach era, and with the Yasiin Bay feature it really feels like Sweepstakes part 2. I really like the song and the Arabian influence is really cool, but the way it builds and builds to a frenzied climax is one for one Sweepstakes. I can say the same thing about Delirium, featuring Mark E. Smith. Mark's vocals are clearly taken from the Glitter Freeze sessions, resulting in the song following its lead. I'm fine with that, as Glitter Freeze is a really unique song and more of that is welcome - but I wouldn't say it's something new and ground-breaking for the group.
To continue with the Plastic Beach comparisons, my only real complaint with that record is that the final leg feels a little drawn out (despite there not really being any one song to single out as weaker than the rest), and I feel the same about The Mountain. The Shadowy light is a synth-driven doo-wap ballad about accepting that everything and everyone comes to an end at some point, and features some of the most prominent Indian language vocals on the record by Asha Bholse, but the overall tune I can take or leave. Similarly Casablanca and The Sweet Prince are dreamy, dreary synthpop tunes that breeze by this point in the tracklist (the album is over an hour long, so the fact that it slows down in the final leg really stands out). Luckily The Mountain ends pretty strongly with The Sad God, which really wraps up the albums themes in a nice little bow, being from the perspective of a benign god looking down at the world and lamenting in all the man made horrors that we as a species have created. It musically calls back to the title track making the whole experience feel very complete. It might actually be the best closer to a Gorillaz record thus far (Pirate Jet is a better song, but feels more like a coda than a closer to me).
The Mountain is a bit of a mountain of a record, but I'm enjoying that for the first time since Plastic Beach, there is more to engage with on a conceptual level. It's not some era defining staple that Demon Days and Plastic Beach have become, but it's certainly a lot more interesting than most of Gorillaz' post-hiatus work. It does feel like it's living slightly in the shadow of Plastic Beach especially (with how much it clearly draws from those sessions and collaborators), and there aren't really any songs (bar The Manifesto) that show their strengths when taken out of the album context. It's almost the inverse of Song Machine. That record is pretty much all bangers but I very rarely listen to it as a full album because there's no cohesive theme or throughline. Whereas The Mountain really works as an album, but not as a collection of songs in isolation. I'm intrigued where Damon and Jamie go next with the project, because they certainly seem more invigorated with this record in interviews than they had been with the last few.
Top Tracks: The Mountain, The Moon Cave, The Hardest Thing, Orange County, The Manifesto, Delirium, Damascus, The Sad God
7/10
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