Blur guitarist Graham Coxon and Atlanta singer Abra pitch in on “Sorcererz” and “Magic City,” respectively jazz virtuoso George Benson adds guitar and vocals on the wistful tiki-bar pop of “Humility,” while Snoop Dogg and house producer Jamie Principle do their thing on the flashy “Hollywood.” The former serves as the perfect opening salvo, as Albarn’s distant vocals providing overcast skies to its otherwise sunny demeanor, while “Hollywood” comes across as The Now Now ‘s only true misstep, its dead-eyed excess briefly disrupting the album’s electronic drift. But The Now Now also sounds like it was made for a big stage at times, it comes across as a spiritual cousin to Albarn’s 2014 solo LP Everyday Robots, swapping that album’s technophobic lullabies for squishy disco motifs, swaths of synthetic grandeur, and crisp beats to create a similarly hermetic, lonely sonic environment.Īnd The Now Now is essentially a solo album: a sharp about-face from the guest-laden vibe of Humanz, the album was largely conceived by Albarn, longtime collaborator Remi Kabaka, and Simian Mobile Disco member-cum-super-producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Haim). Thankfully, despite Albarn recently comparing Gorillaz’s latest to that tablet-generated outing, The Now Now feels anything but tossed-off: it’s the most beautiful and melancholic Gorillaz album since Plastic Beach, expanding on that record’s bleary moments in a way that feels truly sublime.Īlbarn told UK radio station Radio X earlier this month that the main impetus for The Now Now ‘s quick turnaround was to supply Gorillaz with more songs for upcoming live gigs-a curious claim on a few levels, primarily since Gorillaz’ nearly two-decade catalog has plenty of crowd-pleasing fire at this point. The last time Gorillaz exhibited such quick turnaround between releases was 2010’s The Fall, which followed that year’s excellent Plastic Beach with a slight, atmospheric collection of songs that Albarn mostly made on his iPad. Damon Albarn’s long-running, genre-hopping Gorillaz project has typically taken its time between releases in the past, so it’s reasonable to approach The Now Now -Gorillaz’s sixth proper album and the follow-up to last year’s Humanz -with a measure of skepticism.
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