Cracker Island: The safest Gorillaz album ever

There is no doubt that Damon Albarn has once again delivered a high level sonic experience, unique in many ways but mainstream in many others, perhaps that's why I think it's the safest album in the history of Gorillaz, not suitable for fans but for the rest of the world.

Over the last week, I euphorically added "Cracker Island!" to my morning playlist and because of how good and "weird" I found it I decided to dedicate a post to it on oranshnote.com. I'm not a follower of Gorillaz' "Lore" so my analysis of the album will mainly start from what I was able to hear on this one.

The ten tracks that compose this new release give me the impression of being based on a general idea, personifications and thematic developments that start from an island cracked and polarized by a strange sect created under the virtual imaginary of the band.

Cracker Island is the opening track of the album, a very mainstream song, with a bass line that captivates from the first listen and is the one that opens my mind to that island from which I think all the following stories of the album could start. In this song we are invited to be part of a cult, a cult that dominates the island and at the same time ends with it. What are they talking about? It is for me the most energetic song on the album and one of my favorites. The backing vocals, a hallmark of the album, are gorgeous and so singable that it's perfect for shower mornings.

Stevie Nicks joins in for Oil, the second song on the album. A basic song in its conception, very pop/rock, with a clearly romantic lyric, the search for perfect love is also often painful, the vocals were recorded in Los Angeles and perhaps this is also why the rest of the song sounds so much like what is usually produced in this city. Could it be that LA is a cracked city from the point of view of this album?

The Tired Influencer may give one more clue about this island. The song talks about a character who sees how everything around him is wrong "it's a cracked screen world" but at the same time he is obsessed with what's going on inside it. Trying over and over again to get answers from his surroundings, even sleeping while waiting for those "Comments and Likes" that we currently live for. Apparently this song takes place around Silver Lake, a very popular area in LA. Why does LA resonate so much with me on this album?

Silent Running is again a great pop song, very friendly at first listen, very close to the synthesizer feeling of the last years. This is one of the songs that perhaps leaves less references to the general concept of the album. The song is about running away from something, running silently but running at the end of the day, as if you don't want to be discovered because something or someone is causing you a lot of pain and you must get out of there as soon as possible. Who or what causes that, why run silently? This song generates more questions than answers for me.

New Gold is perhaps one of the most beloved songs on the album given its collaboration with Tame Impala. A disco sound, at times sounding like the late nineties in his rap and the constant return to that obsessive melodic chorus that stays in your head for days. Scenes of someone who came from outside, apparently to fulfill a dream and was trapped in this and meets someone and these doubts arise: Who is this girl? Why is she scheduled for a Grammy? We are talking about a wonderful place, could it be that LA, the city of the music industry is cracked?

Baby Queen is the song that breaks the album in two, a slow song about a reunion of many years, a love of times that once happened and could happen again for a few moments. The choruses stand out a lot, emotional while the lead vocal remains so subdued and low, the ambience of the synthesizers, the rhythmic break in a brake down necessary for the dynamics of the song. Maybe it's not my favorite track of the album but it has its own thing.

The energy of the album had to be recovered and Tarántula is just for that. A little more upbeat than the previous album, a little more disco, a little more 80s, a little more romantic but without much different proposal. We are still in the same Cracked Island sound that surrounds this album, but we continue with the album filler.

Do you want to be popular in 2023? Then release a song with Bad Bunny, that's for me the song Tormenta. More than a song from this album it could be a song from the album "un verano sin ti", Benito's last album. I would even dare to place it between "Aguacero" and "Enséñame a Bailar". To my taste it's a bit of a disappointing track, this collaboration was announced since 2022 but I imagined something more risky for Benito's audience and not for Gorillaz' audience. Come on, is that the album up to this point is a total risk for the Gorillaz fan's opinion, maybe that's why this song does make sense, remember the princess made queen of Thailand? Well, what if this song is the tale of that momentary encounter. And taking it a bit further, what if such a queen is fame? Fame that was known in its beginnings, and sought for many more years and in this song is enjoyed knowing that at the end of the night it will be gone.

I love Folk, I love Skinny Ape, that Folk intro, those constant choruses saying "Ape" and the crazy change in the middle of the song, makes me frantic, as if to dance like an animated ape in the band's style. What is the song about? Who knows.

Finally, the band ends the album with a nostalgic track called "Possesion Island" a duet with Beck. A beautiful piano hook, an arpeggio that leaves me nostalgic and I would dare to put it in the scene of The Last Of Us that after getting out of a sewer full of infected they meet the wild giraffes. "Together until the end", "together until the end", I have no doubt it's a beautiful theme.

Each song on the album starts from a broken island, a fantasy that could well be a critique of the art industry in Los Angeles, a broken industry, hard for many artists, a city where many get to dream but few manage to enter the "cult" of show business.