Plastic Beach, the third album from Gorillaz, features contribution from, among many others, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, De La Soul, Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith and The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon. That dazzling guest list, however, eclipses one conspiciously downplayed absence: Danger Mouse, the producer who gave Gorillaz’s last album, 2005’s Demon Days, its triumphant punch.
Head Gorilla Damon Albarn had traded up when he brought Danger Mouse on board for that album, replacing original producer Dan The Automator with fresher blood, but on Plastic Beach, Albarn makes the mistake of handling the production sans collaborator. Behind the boards, Albarn leans heavily on chilled-out electro-pop and synthy ’80s throwbacks, all of which sound finehe's a consumate professionalbut none of which pack the same wow factor of Danger Mouse’s hip-hop ambushes. Plastic Beach is a disappointingly complacent offering from Gorillaz, then, lacking both the vigor and the transcendent highlights of Demon Days.
Or is this even really a Gorillaz album? It's ironic that the De La Soul-assisted, noxiously goofy "Superfast Jellyfish," one of the few genuine misfires on an album that seldom takes enough chances to misfire, assails junk-food packaging and branding, since Plastic Beach exploits the very marketing techniques as those happy meals and sugary cereals. Without Danger Mouse on board, Gorillaz is essentially Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett, the same team behind the unloved 2007 album Monkey: Journey to the West.
Had Plastic Beach been released as a second Monkey album, or for that matter as another Good, The Bad and The Queen album, or under an altogether new project titleit was originally conceived as a not-quite Gorillaz album called Carouselit would have likely been shrugged off as another mediocre, vaguely indulgent Albarn side project. Instead, Albarn drummed up interest by lending it the established Gorillaz brand and marketing it with zany, familiar cartoon characters.
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It's funny what a difference branding makes.
