On Feb. 27, Gorillaz released their 9th studio album, titled “The Mountain,” displaying yet another evolution of their ever-changing style.
In between the release of 2023’s “Cracker Island” and now, the creators of Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, both suffered the sudden loss of several family members and close friends, including both of their fathers. After the passing of his mother-in-law, Albarn convinced Hewlett to go with him to the city of Jaipur, where she lived before passing. Their shared grief, combined with the deeply inspiring culture of India, led to the concept of “The Mountain,” an album of death, mourning, and spirituality, with its musical and thematic roots deeply embedded in Indian culture.
This theme is displayed in the album through a long list of posthumous contributions to the album, featuring deceased musicians via outtakes from their previous collaborations with Gorillaz, such as Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, David Jolicoeur, Tony Allen, Proof, and Mark E. Smith.
With that in mind, 28 years after their creation, Gorillaz continues to maintain relevance, with their newest album putting that on full display.
“The Mountain” opens with its self-titled track, “The Mountain,” an ethereal song with the deceased Dennis Hopper’s vocals sampled from the “Demon Days” song, “Fire Coming out of the Monkey’s Head.” They fade in and out of the Indian folk song-inspired backing track, performed by the Hindu Jea Band Jaipur.
“The Moon Cave” builds off of the previous song, while also setting a precedent for the rest of the album with impactful vocals from Albarn paired with a blend of synths and traditional Indian instruments. It features the most artists out of any one track on the album: Asha Puthli, Bobby Womack, Jalen Ngonda, and, most prominently, Black Thought and David Jolicoeur, the latter of which was the rapper featured on Gorillaz 2010 award winning single, “Feel Good Inc.”
Shifting in tone, a notable song from early in the album is “The Happy Dictator,” a song that, on the surface, comes off as a cheery pop-esque song. This tone is quickly contrasted by the ominous guest vocals from Sparks, lyrics inspired by the dictator of Turkmenistan, as well as Albarn’s prior experience in the country.
The dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov, was notorious for modifying and removing negative news to keep his citizens under the illusion of a perfect society, hence the recurring lyric, “oh what a happy land we live in.”
Another song inspired by the cultures of India is “The Plastic Guru,” this time inspired by when Albarn and Hewlett booked a guru who, unbeknownst to them, broadcasted their session on live TV to “a lot of people” after learning who they were. The song is another of many Gorillaz songs about false happiness, this time represented by a “plastic guru” selling snake oil as a cure.
Two songs that showcase another side to the album are “The God of Lying” and “Delirium,” featuring IDLES, a British post-punk band known for their political activism, and Mark E. Smith, a former member and founder of The Fall, respectively.
Both delve into topics that relate to modern politics, namely, the constant barrage of misinformation brought about by technology, digital escapism, and looking for a voice to follow amongst the flood of opinions. The punk backgrounds of both bands show through in the lyrics, especially in “The God of Lying,” which shows the duality of trying to uncover the truth, “Are you bubbling at the surface of what’s cooking underneath / Are you dying for an answer for what they call good grief,” or accepting what you’ve been told at face value, “Running to the exit with a huge grin on my face / Screaming hope is behind.”
The late-middle of the album is where the album’s theming really takes center stage, as shown in “The Hardest Thing” and “Orange County,” a pair of extremely emotional songs that tie in beautifully to the overarching theme of death. Both feature the same repeated lyric, “The hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love,” as well as similar instrumentals and melodies.
Where they differ, however, is in tone. “The Hardest Thing” is an extremely somber, instrumental-based track, reflecting the lyrics about the inner conflict of a mourner, whereas “Orange County” is an upbeat pop song about the difficulties of moving on from a loss.
These songs showcase these themes perfectly, especially “The Hardest Thing,” which opens with a posthumous contribution from Tony Allen, a pioneering artist of the Afrobeat genre, former Gorillaz collaborator, and close friend of Albarn.
Finishing off the album, “The Sweet Prince” and “The Sad God” delve into the themes of isolation, desperation, and, once again, death, that are present throughout the entire album. This is paired with some of the most impactful points yet, namely, Albarn’s final moments with his father viewed through Indian perspectives of death and the afterlife in “The Sweet Prince.”
Meanwhile, “The Sad God” features the perspective of a god looking down on the world, watching as their creations misuse the gifts they’ve given them; “I gave you love, to fill old glory / I gave you dreams, you wrote the story / I gave you white sails, to reach the sun / I gave you atoms, you built a bomb.”
All of this adds up to be an extremely consistent album, while still being original and surprising in its sound and presentation.
Albarn and Hewlett have masterfully mixed the sense of grief and sadness with hopeful undertones; one would assume that the tone of the album overall would be unbearably sad, but this album, by some miracle, avoids that almost entirely.
Some of the most emotional songs on the album present themselves as upbeat and pop oriented tunes, a purposeful decision from the creators as a reflection of how eastern cultures treat death, as opposed to Europe and America, because in the end, as much as this album focuses on death, it also focuses on rebirth and the events following it.
As Hewlett said, “If we can make an album about death that makes people feel less afraid of the concept of it, wouldn’t that be an amazing gift?”
