Cover art for Gorillaz’s single “Cracker Island (feet. Thundercat). Image courtesy of Spotify.
Gorillaz’s eighth studio album, “Cracker Island” had the potential to be the culmination of years of practice, development, and an overall knowledge of how to craft sound. However, this album plays like a last resort cash grab for the dying corpse of a washed-up hasbeen. “Cracker Island” is a long 37 minutes of very similar and unenthusiastic beats that feel disingenuous.
Gorillaz are a virtual band of cartoon characters made by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. Albarn writes and records music, and Hewlett creates the art and storylines for the characters. They formed as Gorillaz in the early 2000s and started making both music and complex storylines that mostly revolved around the same four characters which comprise the fictitious band. Since then they have continued to release music and other forms of media fairly regularly.
The first track “Cracker Island” (feat. Thundercat), also the title track, is alright, but it never evolves to anything greater than fine. In spite of the lack of clear thought within this song, there are some redeeming qualities. For better or for worse this song is a complete earworm, and the bass feature from Thundercat is one of the only positive elements working for this song. The track is extremely repetitive, and not in a way that feels like a warranted or even a wanted creative choice. Unfortunately, this repetitive and boring track is not the only one on this record, and it sounds like this song is the embodiment of this entire record’s sound. It’s hard to imagine how such an uninteresting and generally bleak song became the sound for the entire record, but nevertheless, Gorillaz ran with it. However, there is an element of silliness in this song, an element that can often be found in the Gorillaz discography which is potentially the only positive to this track.
“Oil” (feat. Stevie Nicks) is, at best confusing and questionable, and at worst extremely boring and borderline unlistenable. The choice to feature Stevie Nicks on any Gorillaz album, but especially “Cracker Island,” is exceedingly strange and completely unnecessary. One can only imagine there are better uses for Nick’s time than however long it took her to record this song. It’s easy to see why a collaboration between a ’70s rock legend and Damon Albarn pretending to be a group of cartoon characters would be jarring, but it’s completely disappointing that neither party felt it necessary to sound even somewhat interested in making this track.
Moving on to the fifth track, and second single, “New Gold” (feat. Tame Impala and Bootie Brown) there is an undeniable increase in quality. This song taps into what made older Gorillaz tracks work without copying their exact tone. But it is unquestionably the result of the featured artists’ influence, as the main sound of the song is much closer to the catalog of featured artist Tame Impala. There is something to be said about allowing the featured artist(s) to make their feature stand on its own, rather than forcing them to conform to the predisposed sound for the record. The combination of Gorillaz, Tame Impala, and Bootie Brown works well and distracts from the overwhelming disinterest displayed by Gorillaz in making this record.
“Baby Queen,” track six, is without a doubt one of the worst examples of the dreary displayed across the board in the album. It raises the question: were Gorillaz held at gunpoint in the studio? A rhetorical question, because fear or any sense of emotion would have been an improvement on the bland nothingness that this album presents.
“Tormenta” (feat. Bad Bunny), track eight, is the burst of life this record was in desperate need of. Once again, the featured artist is the only thing keeping this track together. The track starts with an intro by Gorillaz that is anything but good, but it’s thankfully taken over by the voice of Bad Bunny, who manages to emote more in a single song than Gorillaz could in the rest of the entire album. The tragedy of this track is that Bad Bunny’s take on the style set up by Gorillaz, makes it clear that this album and its concept had potential, but it was completely wasted by Gorillaz total lack of energy. In this one track, Bad Bunny was able to match the indie lo-if style this album presents while still being able to have peaks and valleys with his performance: a task Gorillaz failed at accomplishing. . Listening to this song embodies the feeling of spending the day with a cool uncle and being left behind at the end of the night with inattentive and unhappy parents.
The final track of the album, “Possession Island” (feat. Beck) is a rough closer for a very weak-around-the-edges record. It makes an attempt at creating a more somber but uplifting ending to the journey that is “Cracker Island,” but this track doesn’t accomplish any sort of closure. It leaves the audience with no real sense of payoff. It’s unfortunate to end on such a weak note because even through the worst of it, this wasn’t a completely terrible album
Throughout the record, Gorillaz struggled with a myriad of weak or just generally strange choices that felt both unwarranted and unnecessary. For example, the juxtaposition in sound between the ninth and tenth track makes no sense narratively, and accomplishes nothing past being jarring. The foundations for a good album are there, there are redeemable qualities to most of the tracks off the album, but almost fall completely short of their potential and commit the extreme sin of being boring. Why waste time listening to the underdeveloped “Cracker Island” when older Gorillaz records accomplish everything this album wants to without nearly as much filler.
The real tragedy of this record is that it could’ve been good, but it just isn’t.
Album rating: 4/10
