Demon Days Indeed

While I heard the single, "Feel Good Inc." sometime last year, I had never really listened to Gorillaz until recently. I'd heard good things about their album, Demon Days, but it also had a reputation about being the best album you'll hate at first.

So I finally got a copy of the disc and the pundits were true. While I still enjoyed "Feel Good Inc." immensely, I had a hard time getting into the groove of the album.

Until I decided to use it as background music for World of Warcraft.

WoW indeed. I'm hooked on this album. It has such a wide variety of styles, even within the same song, that I can't peg it to any one genre. It has flavours of britpop, techno, spoken word, rap... the list goes on. It's definately not something for those who like their music safe and boring.

If anyone remembers the band Mansun (not Marilyn Manson) from the late 90's, I find that while the songs and styles are very different, Demon Days reminds me a lot of the experimental sound of Mansun's Attack Of The Grey Lanterns.

Anyway, I was poking around on the net this afternoon and found a few music videos by Gorillaz and had to put links up in case you haven't seen them. The animation style is gorgeous and there is a really interesting vein of dark humour running through the videos I've seen. I'd heard that they were an animated band, but I didn't realize they meant it literally.

Dare is just a cool song, but you have to see the ending(s). They're hilarious.

Feel Good Inc. has one of the most stunning (in my mind) yet simple animated sequences that I have seen in quite some time. It's about halfway through the video and is the part where the camera pans around the floating island with the windmill. It's like something out of a Miyazaki flick.

And Dirty Harry... Well, it's definately interesting. I love the song, but that video is kind of creepy (and this is after watching Dare, which has a guy's disembodied head singing the chorus...) I think it has something to do with a guy leading a children's chorus in the middle of a desert singing, "We need a gun to keep ourselves from harm."

Very cool stuff though. I just figured that I'd point out my musical find to show how far behind the curve I've fallen, musically.

And unlike The Black Eyed Peas, who were the last band I knew nothing about that got a major mention on my website, Gorillaz have an entire album full of solid songs. Man, I hate the Peas. I still love the video and the song of "Let's Get It Started" I don't like the Retarded version, and not just for the lyrics. The beat is different and it just sounds wierd compared to the Started version. And every other Peas song is either annoying or downright grating (and don't get me started on "My Hump"... shudder).