4 out of 5

Label: Parlophone

Produced by: Gorillaz, Danger Mouse, Jason Cox, James Dring

Precision in presentation.  The first Gorillaz disc felt like something of a lark, somethings which Damon Albarn’s career is littered with.  It was high energy and a lot of fun, but the sudden appearance and barrage from nowhere was fueled by poppy glee, and the desire to create a sensation that was decentralized from image.  Success, and the songs were a hoot.  And the ‘virtual band’ was a quirky concept.  But where do you go when you’ve sprung from quirk?  The wiki entry on Demon Days makes it pretty clear: you figure out how you can set up shop and outlast the image.  And so Gorillaz sophomore album feels infinitely more considered: the black-backed artwork verses the white-backed adhocish cover of their first album; the loose narrative strung through the disc; the focus on depth in production – via at-the-time hot-ticket Danger Mouse – over the beat-backed vibe of Dan The Automator; to this extent Days doesn’t necessarily have the breakaway singles of the self-titled disc, tracks more seamlessly flowing from one to the next and the hooks burbling out of synths and layered sounds.  This doesn’t mean Albarn’s pop smarts aren’t reigned in.  We did get singles in ‘Dirty Harry’ and ‘Feel Good Inc.’ and others and they’re damned catchy, they just synchronize with the album effectively as well, which is a good thing for a listener.  DD also more clearly introduced the rotating contributor concept that would be kept up for the albums to come.  Giving into this flexibility both underlines the original theme of a no-band band and also keeps things fresh; there’s definitely a ragga / world-beat vibe to things throughout the album (and that vague darkness / monkeys narrative / parable), but pegging it as pop or hip-hop or electronic will never quite match.

So while Demon Days might not be the staple in everyone’s collection that the instantly accessible Gorillaz was, it’s an impressive expansion and clarification of what could’ve been a simple tossed-off idea, and allowed Albarn an output for his ideas with perhaps less baggage than Blur, meaning that, despite the dark themes in the album’s storyline, it’s still quite a bit of fun.