Critic's evaluation
A little less than a year after the official announcement of the Meanwhile EP, Gorillaz decided to begin preparations for what would be the successor to Song Machine: Season One - Strange Timez, their last studio album. As a kind of amendment to the sessions of this work, the quartet stayed at Studio 13 in London until May 2022 to finish recording Cracker Island, the eighth album of the English group.
With a sugary acidity ambling the listener as if he were in a dance club, Noodle's keyboard enters the scene along with 2-D's low-pitched and slightly metallic vocals. With an initially downtempo beat provided by Murdoc Niccals, the rhythmic tempo picks up slightly as the title track matures into a lounge music exponent. Aided by the almost ghostly timbre of Thundercat's backing vocals, the song immerses itself into an intoxicating yet numbing atmosphere as its melodic base becomes even more danceable house music. The title track speaks of a new home, a kind of artificial paradise based on a sense of censorship, manipulation, authoritarianism, and self-centeredness. A recipe perceived only by those who command, and those who receive, in turn, just live as if this were the normal reality.
With a soft and contagious melody thanks to the organic base promoted by Russel Hobbs' drums, the song, which through its intoxicatingly nauseating and sweetly numbing keyboard notes recalls the aesthetics created by Johnny Marr in Boys Don't Cry, Morrissey's single, conquers an almost manipulative contagion with the listener. With a very present bass in the new wave-indie rock rhythmic base, Oil has an intense melancholic energy that synergizes with the lyricism that, through the participation of Stevie Nicks' sharp and equally numbing vocals, narrates the search for something that creates a comforting feeling in the midst of the darkness of depression. Oil is like a desperate cry for attention, for affection. For salvation.
It is like being submerged in water. The bubbling sounds of the scales while the beat, next to the bass, creates a full-bodied and well-marked base. Still, the listener can feel so light that he can imagine himself floating through the milligram waltz of the melody. Offering an equally light and even nonchalant lyrical interpretation, 2-D levitates between undulating and velvety guitar riffs that set the viewer on Hawaiian soil through its lap steel. Through trip hop, Tired Influencer presents itself as the search, or rather, the mournful nostalgia for a real sentimentality that doesn't exist today. The influence of technology and, in particular, social networks and smartphone and computer screens, has brought about the need for tactile affection, sensitive to the touch. And there, the dark web, mentioned in the last verse, appears as a desperate attempt to recover realistic love. A good reflection for the new interpersonal relationships in hyper-connected times.
The keyboard appears velvety, but at the same time nauseating. In the company of a guitar with a trotting riff and slightly bass, the drums draw a more organic base that leads the listener to a seventies new wave sphere. Wavering and with lounge music blendings while an echoing whistle makes the melody sticky and hypnotic at the same time, Silent Running brings a lyrical interpretation more present, but with thoughtful touches. Offering a tech house aesthetic, the track, while dialoguing, like the title track, about a new world, features Adeleye Omotayo on backing vocals offering R&B riffs to the rhythmic dynamic. Unlike the opening track, however, Silent Running is endowed with remarkable hope, a naive twinkle in the eye that dreams of a dawn of freedom and tranquility. At the same time, however, Silent Running sounds like a song that narrates the use of narcotics as a strategy to escape from the sad, painful, and stabbing reality. Verses like "you make me feel so alive (I'll never be)", "make me cry (Memories and triumph)" and "I decide (This is the season of madness)" are able to justify such an interpretation. And then Silent Running seems to be a linear continuation of Oil.
The synthesizer offers something hypnotically repetitive like that of Pete Townsend's keyboard in Baba O'Riley, The Who's single. Accompanied by the dawning epic sonar of the hammond organ through the keyboard. Elsewhere, the way the guitar moves in the introduction offers a curious reminder of the introductory melody of Owner Of A Lonely Heart, a Hindley Street Country Club single. With a groovy base, New Gold's lyricism is driven by Kevin Parker's raspy, slightly high-pitched timbre. Danceable, New Gold is graced by the sequencing of a rapped verse and cadenced lyricism by rapper Bootie Brown, who makes clearer the bias of the plot, which is initially about futility. New Gold is a song about a city where people live without a purpose.
Synthesizer, keyboard and bass come together in the creation of a soft, yet melancholy based melody. With shavings of sensuality and a velvet like curtains waltzing in tune with the cool evening breeze, Baby Queen is the tale of a nostalgic dream in which Damon Albarn revisits the image of the princess of Thailand, now grown up after the years passed since 1997, when Blur performed in the country.
With a trip hop sharpness that flirts with synth-pop and even soft rock, Tarantula dawns soft and danceable. Groovy and syncopated, the track is ruled by a soft lyrical interpretation that sometimes borders on whispering. Just as it warrants the habits of a tarantula, the track of the same name presents a character immersed in a cutting loneliness. A kind of self-imposed exile that searches for a motivation. Interestingly, at times Tarantula gives the idea of, like Silent Running, bringing in an individual who, through the use of narcotics, has lapses of comfort for achieving the fullness of well-being.
The sound of falling rain is heard in the background while a velvety, minimalist guitar riff introduces itself in a timid way. With an echoing duet ghostly omnipresent, 2-D and Bad Bunny unite in a mix of reggaeton and dub. But what catches the attention in Tormenta is the Latin ambience promoted, besides the musical genres experienced, also by Bunny's Spanish singing, which with its low timbre invites the listener to walk through a romantic plot about beauty, purity, and love. Tormenta is like another sequential and linear chapter of tracks like Silent Running and Tarantula, the point where the character definitely finds its ecstasy of purpose and motivation. In a single word, Tormenta is a track about hope.
Innovative, comforting, cozy. Folk mingles with the rural aroma and the texture of bare feet on a dirt street. Between the softened waltz of acoustic guitars and overlapping vocals coupled with Noodle's backing vocals, the track creates an interesting aesthetic familiarity with that of Turning Stones, Myles Kennedy's single. With the insertion of metallic and acidic sounding phrases with a syncopated groove, Skinny Ape brings the curious vision of high technology arriving in a humble community. Curious eyes hover over this piece that seems to come from another world, but which, by its programming, follows its course without paying attention to the scenery around it. Skinny Ape is a product that is even graced by an energetic and even amusing chorus that manages to represent naivety in the face of the new. The perfect fusion of folk and indie rock.
Soft, comforting, numbing. Thrilling. With little, the union of the tinkles of the scales with the constant velvet of the keyboard manages to make the listener's hair stand on end and leave his eyes watering for an almost enigmatic motivation. However, it is the guitar that, with its sweet, gentle subtlety, provides an undeniably emotional foundation. Spirited, Possession Island, with its mix between indie and shy clippings of flamenco, brings a nostalgic-melancholic dialogue that invites the listener to reflect on the weight and strength of forgiveness. Acquiring sweetness and refinements of a light dramaticity through the piano notes, Possession Island has in the duet between 2-D and Bech a peak of sensitivity while, in the melody, the mellotron manages to merge mariachi touches in a sweet, nostalgic, soft, melancholically comforting and reflective sound. No wonder Possession Island joins Tormenta in offering a lyricism that invites the viewer to think, only.
It may be that Cracker Island was inspired or even motivated by the cancellation of the Gorillaz feature film by Netflix. The truth is that the fact, which initially sounded understandably disgusting, provided the group with the opportunity to release an album of deep, reflective, delicate, and textured lyric-melodic plots.
And in this respect, it even seems that the present album follows the experimentation gamble of Song Machine: Season One - Strange Timez. After all, a range of musical genres are fused into stories about forgiveness, hope, hyper-connectivity, loneliness, insensitivity, lack of belonging and sense of purpose, and the search for salvation.
With the aid of Mark "Spike" Stent's eclecticism and wisdom, Cracker Island has become a melodically complex piece of material by bringing together, beyond the Gorillaz comfort zone of trip hop and dub, other musical genres. They move between indie rock, folk, mariachi, flamenco, reggaeton, soft rock, synth-pop, lounge music, tech house, new wave, house music, rap and R&B.
All this range was synthesized in a balanced way to the lyrical goals of each song through the curation of producers like Remi Kabaka Jr., Kevin Parker, Tainy, and the singer Damon Albarn himself. This collectivity lent even more legitimacy and authenticity to the material.
Closing out the technical scope is the cover art. Again signed by long-time collaborator Jamie Hewlett, it features digital personifications of the members in front of a cabin. Mystical in appearance, what is most striking is the slightly distressing pose of 2-D, who seems to be saying goodbye, in pain, to something not illustrated. Such a feeling captured by the image is perhaps what guides the entire narrative plot of Cracker Island: the anguish of the uncertain.
Released on 02/24/2023 via Parlophone Records, Cracker Island is lancinating, melancholic, and nostalgic material. Its melodic breadth softens its plots, but the lyrical interpretations don't let the listener get lost in the intense socio-reflective bias that the album suggests. Unlike Song Machine: Season One - Strange Timez, in which the invitation was to enjoy, on Cracker Island the invitation is to reflect.
