Gorillaz, “To Binge” (2010)
find it on Plastic Beach

I’m going to eat my words re: Gorillaz, but I’ll just have a half order, please.

When I first heard the new Gorillaz album, it was on shuffle, and just about every song made me reach for the ol’ iPod, thinking what the fuck is this shit?! It turns out that only half of it is a mess, but Jesus…what a mess.

The other half? This is as big of a compliment as I could give music: it reminds me of Blur. “To Binge” is clearly from the same songwriter that gave us “Yuko and Hiro” and “No Distance Left To Run”: a weary, gorgeous melody on top of a woozy backing, with none of the half-baked hooks or guest star bloat that sinks so much of Gorillaz music. Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano is the perfect duet partner for Damon Albarn; simply a smoother echo of Albarn’s gruff voice, sounding more like she’s telling him to calm down, which he does at the end of his melody: “I have to tell you that I love you so much” adding “these days” as though he still needs an escape.

It’s a little frustrating, though. Albarn’s post-Blur output, even when it’s good, still sounds like he can’t quite be bothered to finish it off. The Albarn-fronted songs on Plastic Beach are lovely, but they also make me wonder how good this album could have been if he’d concentrated a little harder on an album of his own, rather than this never-ending, ridiculous comic book conceit that is Gorillaz.