Plastic Beach

I love it. It is a much-needed blast from the past. As good as it was then, as is now. Innovative, genius and layered. Benefits from relistening.

Plastic Beach grasps you from the first instrumentation and takes you into a world of full flourishing colour and experimental rock at its most finest!Demon Days was just the start, what I thought was the best album of 2005 (along with Madonna's Confessions On A Dancefloor)has just been pipped to the post with this magnificent piece of music gold.Gorillaz always seem to get it right, with a magnificent promo music video with a guest starring Bruce Willis to introduce the new beats and style in Stylo, and it is a magnificent introduction at that with a wonderfully grim yet strangely pleasant treat on the eyes and feast for the ears it made me think that Demon Days may not be the best thing Gorillaz will do after all!when I Pre-Ordered i was a little bit apprehensive at first I will not lie but when Stylo was released it made me so proud to be a fan.Plastic Beach launches the listener into a whole new environment, it is an artistic revolution in pop music that everyone must hear.it combines a retro rock feel with a 1960's melancholic use of synths to provide some much authenticity and appeal.on first listen you are entranced by the beats an pacing of each song, on second listen the lyrics really make the album come album, and on third listen it makes it an experience that you want to keep on repeating.each song remains to their own as well as combining themselves together to tell a story and to provide that sense of imagery and enriches that sense of the appeal this album was designed to create.Plastic Beach boasts some of the greatest tunes you will ever listen to all year with the likes of-Rhinestone Eyes, Empire Ants, Superfast Jellyfish, On Melancholy Hill and glitter freeze proving to be of the greatest pop songs thus far into the new decade...each begs for a release with an ever authentic video.last year saw some pretty mediocre comebacks to the music industry, the greatest albums of 2009 consisted of-Florence & The Machine's Lungs, Rihanna's Rated R,Lady GaGa's The Fame Monster, The Noisettes Wild Young Hearts and (one of the best compelations ever!) Madonna's Celebration album.as you can see it was a female dominated year last year and i saved a lot of money aswell! but here Gorillaz show the best of British music, i am sure it will make an impact Stateside with the right promotion and should sell shiploads, and also here in the UK it should sell just as well as their previous album, Boyzone's album got the top spot due to sympathy of the much missed Stephen Gately, but if you want one of the greatest albums EVER made (no exaggeration at all) Plastic Beach is a must for your music collection! and should rake in the brit and grammy Awards next year without a doubt!

Like the music

I initially couldn't get to grips with this album because I felt it was quite a divergence from the Gorillaz fare I was accustomed with, and it took several days of constant play to get my head round how much stuff is packed into such a seemingly small space. A bit like the TARDIS this album is bigger on the inside; you have to leave your prejudices at the door, step inside and immerse yourself in the world of the Plastic Beach. The character 'Russel' has sadly disappeared for some reason, but I read somewhere that he is swimming around in the ocean after reaching gigantic proportions, but that doesn't mean that Del A Soul aren't featured - they appear on 'Superfast Jellyfish' an excellently catchy track with Gruf out of The Superfurry Animals. While 'Superfast Jellyfish' is easily the most accessible track it is the more laid-back tracks such as 'To Binge' starring the beautiful voice of Little Dragon and 'On Melancholy Hill' that really steal the show for me. In fact every track has moments of pure genius and this album really lives up to the pre-release hype that was going on in all the music papers. The fact that the project attracted the likes of Lou Reed, Bobby Womack and Mos Def is testament to the talents of the permanent band members and adds credence to the claims that Damon Albarn is a creative genuis.

There are few groups around now that you can say this about, but the release of a new Gorillaz album is definitely an "event". You could buy individual tracks, just handpicking the singles and standouts, but you'd miss out on a great audio experience. Each of the two other albums worked perfectly as a whole, so I wasn't going to do anything other than buy the album and listen to it all the way through - and I did so several times before writing this review.This is a themed album, which gets across an environmental message in such a way that doesn't feel preachy, and when you only consider the individual songs it is subtle, but the cumulative effect of listening to a whole album full of "look, there's plastic everywhere" isn't subtle, and it can get annoying. The good thing is that there are several great tracks on this record. Pity then that it starts with a whole minute of uninspired wash-out "orchestral" music and descends after the tenth track into a mush of forgettable "P-sides" (if you don't get that reference, there were two b-side albums called G-sides for Gorillaz and D-sides for Demon Days). "Sweepstakes" is not one of these - it's a good track, but feels out of place where they put it. It would have been better really if they'd have gone for two separate concept albums on the same CD instead of spinning one idea out across sixteen tracks.Forget that though. Even though this is the first Gorillaz album I won't continue playing as a whole, it's still got a 70% hit rate for great tunes. There are more guest artists here then even before, yet it works and I don't think I've liked Snoop Dog more than on the first real track "Welcome to the world of...". "Stylo" is laid back funk of the best kind. "Superfast Jellyfish" is mad, good and dangerous not to know - it's the "Dare" of this album in that it's going to be a real breakout track when released as a single. "On Melancholy Hill" is the best purely song driven track on the album. "Glitter Freeze" can't adequately be described, so just listen to it. "Empire Ants" is a Demon Days throwback in the best possible way. There are many great songs here, but the album loses its way too much for me to give it the full five stars I'd give the other two albums.

The media could not be loaded. Looks great and sounds great

An eclectic, involving & enjoyable mix of very musical tracks - I would highly recommended this album.