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Plastic Beach cover

Plastic Beach

Gorillaz

pop electronic electropop art pop indie dance psychedelic pop uk
Parlophone

Recorded

2010

Released

2010

Damon and the cartoonz had lodged all the hits by this point, in 2010, and so he did what any sane person does when their address book has gotten truly fabulous: call literally everybody. And, it turns out, everybody said yes. Do you want an album with Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Kano, Little Dragon, Paul Simonon, and Mark E. Smith? Of course you do, and the Gorillaz microwave-on-mid groove works well for pretty much anything you put on top of it. Gorillaz will go down for several reasons, one that the project was much better than it had to be, and that they were truly one of the great backing bands. The “hit” track here, “On Melancholy Hill,” sounds like a TV theme for the world that came before Gorillaz were even possible. Spooky and sweet and thought-through.

Sasha Frere-Jones

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