My now 23 year old son Oz got me interested in the Gorillaz when he was in 7th grade. I had been familiar with The Gorillaz before but at that time they were the “Clint Eastwood” and “Feel Good Inc” band, I knew they kept releasing albums and would tour from time to time but I would never have called myself a fan. When Oz was in middle school the Gorillaz comeback album Humanz was released and his fandom was enough to get me a little bit more into them. We saw them live in concert together in the nose bleeds of our local indoor sports stadium style venue known as The Key Arena at the time and after the show he said that he felt jealous of the people in the front who were all able to dance like crazy and I said I’d make sure he was down there the next time they came to town.
The next time we saw them the name of the arena had changed to Climate Pledge Arena but we managed to get in the front two rows and my Gorillaz fan son, now an adult got to have an energy exchange with lead singer Damon Albarn during their song “Tranz” wherein Damon was pointing his finger in time at Oz wearing a Jason mask and yelling the lyrics “make yourself look like an effigy” That’s the moment I would truly say I became a fan. Getting to see my kid share a moment with one of his favorite living musicians during a song that was important to his development as an artist and as a music lover. There’s no way to quantify what experiencing something like that does to you.
The previous two album cycles leading up to their brand new 2026 release, The Mountain, have been atypical for Gorillaz. But to be fair, things have been on the atypical side for everyone since 2020. During worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett delighted their fanbase by releasing several new songs with accompanying music videos under the umbrella project title Song Machine, starting with “Momentary Bliss” in January of 2020.
After heavy pandemic restrictions were lifted and they completed a full double album’s worth of songs, Gorillaz compiled the Song Machine project into an album for proper release that October.
Not long after this happened, my son and I got to see them from the 2nd row. On that tour, the Gorillaz live outfit played a few new songs that no one was quite familiar with yet. These would end up on their next release, 2023’s Cracker Island. According to Albarn, Cracker Island’s life began as Song Machine 2 and ended up with a plot superimposed over its already established anthology kitchen-sink style writing. As a result, to many fans, Cracker Island felt like another grab bag of songs and not the sweeping concept album style of songwriting the band is known for. The Mountain is not a Song Machine-derived project. This is a proper Gorillaz album with a proper plot, its own album-specific motifs and underlying themes that the band gets to explore. In my opinion, this is the Gorillaz returning to form with a triumphant and prolific musical statement that one day will likely be mentioned in the same reverent breaths that fans speak of favorite albums like Demon Days and Plastic Beach.
Right out of the gate, the opening track “The Mountain” is not an ordinary Gorillaz song.
The cascading, sweeping notes of a sitar, complemented by the Indian flute, the Bansuri, create a tapestry of melody and pensive meditation before the percussion of tablas enters the song, augmented with an acoustic guitar. Part spiritual jazz salutation, part musical overture, the Mountain greets you with open arms, and as it winds to its conclusion, the more-than-familiar voice of Dennis Hopper enters to lend the audience an almost spiritual mission statement of what this album is going to explore.
The Mountain is life and beyond life.
Track two, “The Moon Cave,” enters quietly; if you told me the strings were sampled from a Martin Denny Exotica album, I’d believe you. But then Indian singing and sitar return to the front just before the first full-band drop. When the drop hits, you’re in synth groove heaven with Damon singing as his animated white-eyed frontman counter 2-D; this is the Gorillaz. Noodle chimes in with the late great Bobby Womack singing passages, almost like a filigree, to complement the song. The Mountain, as the concept of Life and Afterlife, features performances by previous Gorilliaz collaborators who have moved beyond a physical state of existence. Dennis Hopper and Womak are joined by former Gorillaz guest alumni, Proof, Mark E Smith, Tony Allen, and De La Soul’s David Jolicouer.
This album feels like a celebration of life and love and friends, and of the songs we share that bind us together. “The Happy Dictator,” featuring Sparks, feels like an ’80s pop song you’ve never heard before. When Damon as 2-D laments on track 4 that the “you know the hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love, that is the hardest thing.” There’s no hook, there’s no beat, there’s an almost church-like reverence in the performance. When he repeats it again as the intro to Orange County before the beat drops, you could never imagine that he’s now using this melancholy observation as a hook. This is a brilliant concept record through and through, and something sorely missing from the last two Gorillaz albums. Beautiful messages wrapped up in pitch-perfect pop/hip-hop songs written by one of the most gifted songwriters Britain has ever produced.
I’m not going to gush about every track, but instead, I’m going to leave off here and allow this to be a statement of my first impressions of the first 20 minutes that greet you on the record. I am on playthrough 3, and I’ve only just started listening this morning. I am obsessed already, and I plan to listen to it many more times over the coming weeks. There are hooks that will live in your head forever if you’re a Gorillaz fan. The amount of Indian music and Bollywood influence is stunning in how seamlessly it’s been incorporated into their sound. Oz has the preorder vinyl edition heading his way for his birthday, and I’m going to find a local record store later today to get my own copy.
The non-cartoon members of the Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, were born ten days apart from one another, and coincidentally, they both lost their fathers ten days apart from one another as well. After they both lost their paternal parents, they made a trip to India, which rounded out the overall concept of this record. Oz and I helped take care of my dad till the end when he was sick with Alzheimer’s, and he was in the thick of it when we went to that second Gorillaz show with one another. Even with my boy grown and out of the house, I’m glad that an album about the grief of a parent and coping with loss can be a shared piece of art that transcends generations and can be something my son and I can share while far apart in distance from one another. This becomes a wonderful and special way to connect, which is what all art is truly about at the end of the day.
With a European tour about to kick off, US tour dates announced today, a European tour, South America tour to follow, the band’s first-ever SNL performance happening on March 7th with Ryan Gosling hosting, and a new masterpiece of an album, the Gorillaz are in the middle of a big moment. If you read or listen to the things Damon and Jamie are saying, it doesn’t take a lot to see why. Take it from my Albarn himself, “This record is an exclamation mark in Jamie’s and my lives. It’s more than a record for us. It was like a return to a feeling we had about Gorillaz that we hadn’t really been able to embrace since Plastic Beach.”
It’s a really good time to be a Gorillaz fan.
North American Tour begins September 17th in Orlando and wraps up with HALLOWEEN IN SEATTLE (OMG!). Presale starts Friday, March 6th and you can register for that here. Public onsale is Monday, March 9th.
