Review Summary: Plastic Beach is an very good album that nerver gets boring, it´s dreamy and it´s not compareable to the other Gorillaz things
Plastic Beach, Gorillaz, I had no expectation in this album,
ok its normal that everybody is comparing "Demon Days" and the first "Gorillaz" to this album
but you cant compare one Gorillaz album with another because their style is changing with every album.
The "Orchestral Intro" is a wonderful beginning of a wonderful travel through the island Plastic Beach.
It is dreamy, you are just on the landing plane, where Snoop Dog is waiting with the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble to welcome you with the "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach".
Snoops rapping harmonizes with the beat of the brasses and then you´re on Plastic Beach,
you want to know something about the island and you ask the tourist information two grime rappers
Kano and Bashy who want to help you with a Lebanese Orchestra in form of "White Flag", the oriental style which surounds the rap parts, and makes you to visit the near House on Plastic Beach.
O there you here 2D singing "Rhinestone Eyes", this song was the first time I heard the album the first song who came direct into my ear, like the single Stylo, a dark but also a groovy song, 2D, Bobby Womack and Mos Def made one of the best songs that were ever made, this song makes happy, at first its a strange song but if you let the rhyhtm take you, you never want to come back from the island.
Well you landed, you saw the some inhabitants and you danced it´s logic that you´re hungry, you do not have to worry, there´s a delicacy jellyfishes but not just jellyfishes "Superfast Jellyfish"es, served from Gruff Rhys and cooked from De La Soul. It´s gaga pop, funny, ironic, and it tastes like chicken, not bad.
You want to go to bed, and you´re attended from Yukimi Nagano with "Empire Ants", a light pop song
perfect to sleep, not meant in a bad way.
You slept a bit, but a very strange sound waked you up, was it a pirate? Yes and not just a normal pirate it was "The Fall" singer Mark E. Smith, and yes it was the "Glitter Freeze", techno beat with a punk singer who does not sing what a combination, but it does not harmonize with the rest of the album because the song is hectic and sometimes annoying.
But a nice man protects you from the pirates Lou Reed with his rock song "Some Kind of Nature",
it makes glitter freeze forgettable, also the melody of the song is a bit funny.
He took us on top of a hill with a plastic tree, the "(On) Melancholly Hill", where Damon Albarn (2D) shows his favorite place of the island, very dreamy and melancholic song.
We stay on top to listen Damon a second time on the track "Broken", we see the sun arises, we have to go but on the way back we meet the evil Sun Moon Stars or Mos Def, who wants that we should play "Sweepstakes", to get addicted and spent more and more money, on a hectic, together with the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, track, which like Glitter Freeze disrupts the mood, well it can be good, but it´s a problem of the track list I think, Sweepstakes should come earlier.
Then after another really hard day on the "Plastic Beach", we watch a little information film of the island accompanied by the guitars of Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of the Clash.
Our next goal is the balcony, where the radio is playing "to Binge", very poppy, the perfect song to lay down in a hammock or just lay down at the beach and relax.
Then the demigod of soul Bobby Womack brings us a Cloud the" Cloud of Unknowing", where we can feast in dreams.
The end of this second and last day on Plastic Beach ends in the Tavern with all the others also with the Pirates to drink with them at the "Pirate Jet".
The really outstanding songs are the single Stylo, with three excellent singer, Rhinestone Eyes, Albarn is one of the best singers in the world, On Melancholly Hill, perfect to dream, Plastic Beach and Pirate Jet.
The album is not a candy pop bull***, many songs are poppy but they don´t drive into kitsch,
their not inelegant like Britney Spears or Kesha.
Some people think that Plastic Beach would be the same as Demon Days, I say fk it, Demon Days had more choirs, more hip-hop, was more serious, in fact the musical style on Demon Days is never gaga. Plastic Beach has more popular people they made a good job.
