Transitioning from their self-titled debut to their sophomore release “Demon Days,” Gorillaz’s lineup has gone through some major changes. The band has lost its main producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura and one of its collaborators, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, but has retained original creators Damon Albarn (lead singer of Brit-pop band Blur) and illustrator Jamie Hewlett, while picking up Danger Mouse (perpetrator of the illegal Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up “The Grey Album”) as a producer. “Demon Days” also features multitudes of guests, from Dennis Hopper (who provides a silly line-reading on track “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head”) to Shaun Rider (from band Happy Mondays) who provides the vocal for dance-track “Dare,” one of the album’s highlights.
The album really belongs to band creator Albarn, whose creative use of sampling is one of the disk’s highlights – “Kids With Guns” features a sampling of the Salt ‘n Pepa standard “Push It,” and the opening track features the theme from “Dawn of the Dead.” The other most important contributor is Danger Mouse, who fearlessly juxtaposes the surreal with the lighthearted on stand-out track “Feel Good, Inc.” (featuring De La Soul).
Many who listen to “Demon Days” will confuse it for shallow techno/rap; each song contains sugary-sweet techno beats and a thumping bassline (in the annoying sense). While most the songs fit into this category, some of the songs escape this classification such as the dark “Last Living Souls” and the edgy “Kids With Guns.”
Behind the surface of some of the songs on “Demon Days” is a surprisingly somber message of a fractured society in a post-9/11 world. Guest Bootie Brown sings on “Dirty Harry”: "The war is over / So said the speaker / With the flight suit on / Maybe to him I'm just a pawn / So he can advance / Remember when I used to dance / All I wanna do is dance."
On “Feel Good, Inc.”, the song’s message is just as its title suggests – music can make us feel good. De La Soul sings, “Love forever love is free / Turn forever you and me / windmill, windmill for the land / Is everybody in?” Nonsensical lyrics, yes; the rest of the album’s cartoon-character vibe evades me, as well. But the point of “Feel Good, Inc.” (and the rest of the album for that matter) is that music can be cartoony and playful and still be insightful and engaging.
By the middle stretch, “Demon Days” loses the steam built with its opening six tracks. “November Has Come” is barely produced, “La Mañana” drags on even though it’s only four minutes long, and “Every Planet We Reach is Dead” makes me want to kick in my CD player. After the ridiculous Dennis Hopper line-reading “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head,” things improve with the melodic “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” and “Demon Days” (featuring the London Community Gospel Choir).
If you’ve heard “Feel Good, Inc.” on the radio and you enjoyed it, I recommend picking up “Demon Days.” The album’s strength is in its whole, the message it contains and its balance of playfulness and musical ingenuity. I do not recommend downloading just “Feel Good, Inc.” or just parts of “Demon Days,” because then you would miss out on the hilarious album art and you might miss some of the album’s strongest songs, such as the aforementioned dance-track “Dare” and the beautiful “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven.”
If you haven’t picked it up already, I recommend “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” instead of “Demon Days” – the style of music is sometimes similar, and the mood is at times just as playful. If you already own “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” and you want to listen to something playful but with an edge, “Demon Days” is highly recommended.
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