And so comes the catch-up. The heady days of Gorillaz were long behind them. The Fall marked an impromptu, seven-year hiatus for a band whose presence felt magnificent and vital for furthering how music of any genre can progress. But Gorillaz fell to its sword and scuttled away from the studio. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett had differing thoughts on where the project should go. The latter believed the art should take its place at the front and centre once more, as though the designs of Plastic Beach were not well-designed but empty sketches of songs that Albarn paired with the likes of Lou Reed and Mark. E Smith. Humanz, then, rips the beating core from the Gorillaz aesthetic and plays ball with Xbox 360 avatar-like designs. A nasty mix, and the music is no better.
Turn those robots off for good. With Vince Staples attached to the first track proper, Gorillaz set themselves up for a strong introduction. Humanz has such with Ascension, the sky-falling horrors playing out over this thrashing, spiralling electronic blowout as the backing vocalists cry for a higher being. It is as good as Humanz gets. But those distorted tones, the pangs of electronic stuttering, begin to fall away. Disinterested pieces like Saturnz Barz showcase one of the many struggles Gorillaz still cannot cope with. An overload of collaborations is weighing them down. The mockery of nonsensical Albarn interjections over a beat and lead of heartbreak and hardship must spawn from here. It happens enough throughout these twenty tracks. Bits like Momentz feel like frustrated attempts at rekindling their best days. The De La Soul-featuring song is a far cry from Feel Good Inc.
From Submission onward it does sound as though Gorillaz are yielding to the flurry of possible collaborations. Their voice is gone and in its place is an inconsistent flurry of ideas. Picking itself back up with the DRAM-featuring Andromeda gives Humanz a better scope of what it wants to be, as does Busted and Blue. Reconnect with the glory days and feel for the future, whatever it may be. Albarn had allegedly asked collaborators to imagine a world where Donald Trump was elected president. As with most art made under the scope of impending Republican doom, it feels reactionary and angry, but cannot condense or navigate the minefield of emotional horror. Humanz tries to pool something of interest towards the end but the best it can muster is the intermittent gothic pangs of She’s My Collar.
Repetitive bits like Sex Murder Party do little to rouse the spirits though the bells of hope chiming through in the dying seconds of Hallelujah Money are sparks of interest. It is over before you know it – a Jehnny Beth collaboration on the numb We Got the Power as reactionary as it gets. Humanz changes form over and over, a scattershot of ideas hoping to claw at the world around them. But in its desire to comment on the scenes of terror and destruction comes a lack of self-identity. Gorillaz are now the sum of their parts and for the collaborative pull they present here, with fixtures from anyone from Pusha T to Benjamin Clementine, Humanz fails to platform its voice. Even then, it has little of interest to say and burns through other artists to try and cross an ever-shifting finish line.
