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Live review: Gorillaz at Frank Erwin Center
Try to diagram exactly what Gorillaz is - a band, an overgrown side project, a cartoon, a mixed-media craft lab, a creative Club Med for a rotating roster of guest collaborators, a viral Internet experiment that long ago escaped its test tube - and it seems there’s roughly 1,000 ways it shouldn’t come off as anything more than a too-eager music theory doctoral thesis somehow come to life.
Too many layers. Too many directions. And way too many cooks in the kitchen.
So given all of that, how in the world does a night like Friday at Erwin Center happen, where Gorillaz lead man Damon Albarn guides a revolving cast of close to 50 musicians through a program of some of the most thrilling, satisfying pop music you’re going to hear this or any other year.
Mainly by concentrating on the “band” part of Gorillaz’ makeup, while still making the visuals crafted or inspired by Albarn’s co-creator/illustrator Jamie Hewlett a prominent component of the show. The band’s multi-media nature was front and center from the start when Snoop Dogg appeared dressed in classic naval attire on the giant screen atop the stage, where a seven-piece string section and eight-piece brass band led the way while the superstar rapper delivered a recorded rendering of his verses to “Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach”.
After that obvious intro song (it’s the great lead-off to this year’s hit album “Plastic Beach) the stage flooded with Albarn and the rest of the core band, who kicked into the squiggly pop-funk-hop of “19-2000” and showed an arresting interplay and ability to react to one another for such a sprawling, creatively mutating project.
Of course, when you’ve got two all-time greats like Clash vets Paul Simonon and Mick Jones respectively on bass and guitar - two guys who built their legends by playing punk filtered through other genres the way Gorillaz do in a post-modern pop context - you’re going to have a lot more creative leeway and ability to take chances.
Maybe that’s the secret to Gorillaz; that Albarn - already a certifiable British pop legend from his years with Blur, before he stepped out on this creative limb - is really good at picking guests and collaborators who either bring “wow”-y star power or left field surprises and surrounds them with the right musical trappings. That was the case again and again Friday, whether the occasion called for rappers Posnudos and Dave from De La Soul bum rushing the stage for “Superfast Jellyfish” and (later) big hit “Feel Good Inc.”, soul legend Bobby Womack sauntering out throughout, but most notably for “Stylo” with rapper Booty Brown, or a short suite of Arabian instrumental music featuring a sextet of Syrian musicians Albarn said he met while recording last year in Damascus.
If that all reads like the night was a lot to take, it occasionally was. While there were numerous moments of unbridled fun and harmony (Womack’s encore-opening showpiece “Cloud Of Unknowing,” the simple folk of “Melancholy Hill,” Shaun Ryder’s CGI’d severed head singing “Dare” up on the big screen) there was a short stretch toward mid-show (my notes indicate around “El Manana” and “White Flag”) where vertigo started to set in and you really needed an Albarn-focused tune to re-establish creative gravity.
The familiar lunacy of “Dare,” followed by “Plastic Beach,” helped things settle back in to end the opening set and Womack’s turn at stage front for “Cloud Of Unknowing,” to kick off the encore added even more gravitas counterpointed by De La Soul’s return for the nitro-powered funk of “Feel Good Inc.”
And if “Clint Eastwood” - the band’s first and biggest hit and a sure-thing inclusion for pop compilations from last decade - seemed a little foreign because of new verses delivered by guest rappers Bashy and Kano, well, that’s the chance you take when you hop into an animated dune buggy with this bunch. Because for every occasional bump in the road there’s far more time spent sailing madly through air and space to make it all worth it.
Set list
- Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach
- 19-2000
- Last Living Souls
- Stylo
- Melancholy Hill
- Rhinestone Eyes
- Superfast Jellyfish
- Tomorrow Comes Today
- Empire Ants
- Broken Lyrics
- Dirty Harry
- El Manana
- White Flag
- To Binge
- Dare
- Plastic Beach
(encore)
- Cloud Of Unknowing
- Feel Good Inc.
- Clint Eastwood
- Don’t Get Lost In Heaven
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