James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
The fact that the collection of tracks resembles a full length album already gives a rather odd impression from a front man as ominous as Albarn, who claimed that Demon Dayz was the end of the animated project. However, the new release projects its interesting image because of the quality of the tracks. The fact that the majority of the unreleased songs are better than expected comes as a delightful surprise, for Albarn could of released two discs of ambient, psychedelic J-Pop and made a killing.
D-Sides is not really meant to be a cohesive unit, or if that was the intention of the album if fails terribly; rather it is a simple collection of really cool sounds. Essentially that’s what the whole point of the Gorillaz project was, to strip down and combine genres, making it into something cool and experimental. Here the listener will not find anything that they haven’t heard before from the Gorillaz, but they will find a lot of cool tracks that will make you wish all bands came out with such an extensive ‘B-sides’ album.
'‘Hong Kong, Bill Murray, and People are the stand-outs of the album, each featuring the techno meets pop, has a child with an alternative rocker who goes through a hip-hop phase, that made the Gorillaz so likeable in the first place. Albarn almost always has a “concept” behind his albums, whether it was with Blur, the Gorillaz, or on the nameless, pretentious project of the Good, the Bad and the Queen. However, here there is no apparent concept (however, they’re not that apparent on the other albums), there is just some really funky tracks to get into.
The only downside to the dual disc compellation is the way that some of the best tracks on Demon Dayz are utterly butchered so that there can be a remix version of them. The attempt at creating something new from something old goes a bit to far in some instance, such as Dirty Harry (Chinese New Year Remix)'’. Yes, the idea is a bit amusing, but no one needs to here this song totally redone with a ton of unnecessary Chinese vocals. The long and short of this two disc compellation appears as a must have for any Gorillaz fan and even for the casual listener. The mishmash of styles featured in the two discs is enough to satisfy any music fan for some time.
Similar Recommendations: Gnarles Barkley – St. Elsewhere, Beastie Boys – The Mix Up
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