Gorillaz – Cracker Island Review

Damon Albarn’s dream factory manned by animated caricatures steamrolls through collaboration after collaboration. Discourse has quickly shifted away from questioning the contemporary unification of abundant artists to attempting to understand what they bring to the table. The best of Gorillaz’s music is often their in-house work, aside from the Shaun Ryder-led powerhouse of Dare. But Cracker Island, in a similar shift to Song Machine, has turned to those they admire, those that inspire, and cut through with a collection of tracks that are energetic, empty and structured with flickers of fatigue. Running on fumes as they pull into that titular island, it looks like the gang has cracked and the fed-up approach to the tinny mixtures and heavy drums throughout Cracker Island is as disappointing as they are aimless. 

Thundercat collaborations on opening, title track Cracker Island are as good as it gets. It is the new form Gorillaz take. Upbeat, well-worked electropop with some nice bass hits from Thundercat. Narrative formations on the hefty dose of music videos are uninspired as is follow-up track and album piece Oil. Stevie Nicks’ name is slapped on, her presence as a unique artist absent. Relegated to backing the weaker works of Albarn, Cracker Island manages a constant and undercutting mediocrity that fails to give those collaborations much room to push through or bring something new to the table. Albarn and friends shuffle the deck of flatlining goals, and as The Tired Influencer tries to slide its way into a stilted summer feels playlist, the honesty usually at the core of Gorillaz ebbs away. 

But they press on, as The Tired Influencer, which appears more and more as an autobiographical piece for the state of Gorillaz as a once innovative force, notes. Their stretch of unremarkable singles, Silent Running, New Gold and Baby Queen, are nothing major. Nothing interesting follows, either. Cracker Island soon becomes a toxic refuge for half-hearted ideas, laden with Daft Punk rips and stock beats that Albarn layers an ever-strong voiceover. What a waste. Tarantula attempts to pick the pieces up, a track about fantasy and love lost, the appeal of feel on a song ridding itself of collaborative woes. Melancholic acoustics come too little, too late for Beck-collaborating Possession Island. Albarn can stand and look out on the dark plains as much as he wants, the basic fields and plastic beaches that are behind him still look fresher than Cracker Island.  

“Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light,” Groucho Marx once said. His words litter the end of the first track and are a sort of manifesto for how Gorillaz conduct themselves, or, rather, how they believe they create. Gorillaz are tired influencers. That well ran dry a decade ago but through obligation alone they have persevered, pursuing new collaborations with big names, legends and up-and-comers in the hopes of siphoning off some unique line of interest. Cracker Island is a collaborative mess but not because of what each left-field collaborator brings, but of how it exposes the weakness at the core of Gorillaz. They leave none of their own presence. Tormenta does not feature Bad Bunny, it is a Bad Bunny track. Gorillaz’s Cracker Island makes them the tourists to their own album as they’re shoved around, visiting stalls of potential influence, filling their cart and hoping collaboration will guide them once more. Trailblazers no more.