Gorillaz and their march toward a new album goes through the same process as usual, then. Quality singles, hold the breath while the album slowly rumbles toward the listener, prepare for disappointment. It is a bit like that steamroller gag from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Or at least, it was with Song Machine and how flattening, how disappointing, that turned out to be. Maybe some of that fatigue, that flattened feel, comes from seeing the art style and qualities of Gorillaz change for the worse. Xbox 360 avatars are now steering the group to their next wave of sound, their sickly post-Plastic Beach desire for style over substance, thankfully, not present on Skinny Ape.
It is clear that Damon Albarn’s solo album has had some influence over Skinny Ape’s opening moments. No other Gorillaz track from this era could get away with a soft, acoustic opening before dropping itself into a track that sounds like being trapped in a lift with bass strings for cables. It is a good feeling for a little while. A little tense, but broadly enjoyable. Nice vocal variations power through Skinny Ape, a piece that holds Albarn at the forefront for the first half of the track. It is a strange change of pace; the slower tempo lends itself to that new style Gorillaz has been trying to nail down. They get a little closer with Skinny Ape. Despite those new clarifications of lyrical strength, the “In a new world, don’t be sad for me” repetition finding some real quality, it all comes to pieces when the lyrics take a turn.
Melodies that do not quite add up, moments of real, lacking quality in the latter stages of the track. Perhaps that comes from half of it being a repetition of the word “ape”. Skinny Ape is, of course, about that eponymous cartoon character, but the self-autobiographical status of a track filtering through the words “skinny little, skinny little” requires some extreme, heavy lifting. Much of that comes from the brief explosion of tempo, two songs halved and stuck together. It is messy, but at least interesting. Interesting from a technical perspective, mind, the “skinny ape” repetition is as boring, repetitive and dull as it gets. It lacks the clarity found earlier in the track, an emotional build-up that has absolutely no pay-off. Even then the emotional moments in those early moments are reliant on the timbre of those acoustic brevities, brief moments that can touch before devolving into what is, essentially, a football chant.
Albarn tries to salvage that chant with a quick bit of slower, ballad-like seconds in the end but by then the damage is done. A song of two halves. Skinny Ape starts well and ends horribly. A real Jekyll and Hyde piece of work that sees an electric ballad devolve into the hype man introduction videos stapled to the front of a video game kill compilation, where the name of the artist shoots across the screen as lightning forms around it. Gorillaz have been rumbled. Skinny Ape is a sign of what is to come, the half-baked approach of a long-touring group, collapsing in on themselves as they realise their pulpy emotional ballads are nothing without something for Damon Albarn to jump around to.
