For The Record: The Mountain

Recency bias doesn't apply here. Gorillaz' new album is the record humanity needed...

I’m not sure what it says about the world we live in that a cartoon band have more authenticity than many of their real-life contemporaries, but I know that it’s not good.

Rather than focussing on the negative aspects there, this is intended to be a celebration of The Mountain. And so, 25 years after Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s animated punk stars first graced our eyes and ears, the ninth album might just be a career-equalling behemoth.

For the former, that includes Blur and solo output. At university and thereafter, my love for Gorillaz and lack of such strong emotion for much of Blur’s output was met with derision. I think it’s safe to say I’m having the last laugh.

But then, Humanz was released in my final year of university, so there was already Demon Days and Plastic Beach out to make the point. From where I’m standing, The Mountain stands with those two as the third behemothic beauty from 2-D, Noodle, Murdoc, and Russell.

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Like many amazing albums, I didn’t love this on first listen. Ordinarily, months or even years can pass before re-evaluating. But my instant love for the opening title track - an almost entirely instrumental consisting of the work of traditional Indian musicians - before discarded vocals from the late Dennis Hopper from Demon Days’ Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey’s Head.

Right off the bat are three of The Mountain’s overarching themes: Indian music, ties to previous albums, and blurring the lines between life and death. With an opener like that, it’s no surprise that an album which left me unsure on the day of release is already up there with my favourite Gorillaz projects less than a fortnight later.

In the quarter of a century since the eponymous debut, Gorillaz have gone stratospheric, Albarn and Hewlitt have parted ways, a seven-year gap between albums ensued, and multiple brilliant records have been released.

This one’s predecessor, 2023’s Cracker Island was a nadir. That is an album I haven’t listened to since release. Everything about it felt pretty uninspired, from the messy cover art to the less-than-imaginative features.

None of those criticisms can be aimed this way. Despite the best efforts of Song Machine and The Now Now, it was coming up to a decade without a Gorillaz album that felt like a statement more than it did a mere collection of music.

The debut showcased what a virtual band could be, Demon Days was a scathing criticism of post 9/11 America, and Plastic Beach, the band’s magnum opus, ahead of its time in tackling climate issues.

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With over one hundred guest features on Gorillaz’ music prior to this album, it’s startling to realise that one of its biggest rosters yet for an album has produced by far the most personal work of Albarn’s career to date.

Separate trips to India sandwiched both Albarn and Hewlett losing their fathers; it is reflected heavily here. Pertinently, on Orange County (one of the happiest sounding songs the band had ever done):

“The hardest thing is saying goodbye to someone you love”

In such trying times, this album is a celebration of life. In using leftovers and outtakes from previous sessions with, amongst others, the aforementioned Hopper (The Mountain), Bobby Womack and Dave Jolicouer (The Moon Cave), Mark E. Smith (Delirium), Proof (The Manifesto), and Tony Allen (The Hardest Thing), all passed before this album came to fruition.

But as is common belief in Indian spiritual journeys, those who have left this world are still present in another. Death is not necessarily the doom and gloom with which it is treated here in the Western world.

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Much of The Mountain comes to terms with this belief, and goodness only knows how healing that was for its creators. As well as their famous features, both living and not, Indian musicians litter the guestlist.

Nobody could accuse of Albarn using India as a gimmick for new music. Yes, the bones of a lot of these songs could have been tied to various other types of music (Delirium was originally written for Plastic Beach), but Albarn and Hewlett are completely basking in the glow of what this country and these teachings have given them.

This record looks at death and life through a completely different prism to how Albarn has before, both as Gorillaz, Blur, and perhaps most pertinently himself. The cartoon characters aren’t as central to the narrative as they were at the start of the millennium, but Albarn still sings through 2-D exclusively. In many ways, that perhaps allows him to be more real with the feelings he is expressing.

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The day before the album’s release, Gorillaz released an accompanying eight-minute film to the album, The Mountain, the Moon Cave and the Sad God. In this ‘enshitified’ world where AI is pushed on us and the ability to think for ourselves, to create art, to embrace creativity, is all being taken away, Albarn and Hewlett stood up to the movement that sums up much of what is wrong with the world.

Anything worth having shouldn’t be easy. Hand-drawing the film, actively making a statement about not using AI, that’s what we, as living, breathing human beings, need. I’m not certain we deserve it on the whole, but fighting the good fight is something more and more people seem receptive to as the evils of generative AI become more apparent to the masses.

Taking inspiration from One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Jungle Book, the video is a veritable what’s what of all that makes Gorillaz great from start to finish. I’m not nearly brave enough to debate the meaning of it or what Murdoc did or did not do with the snake, but there is of course a glorious Reddit thread dedicated to such discussions.

The content is much less important than the input, and it is further proof of everything about this album feeling genuine. It feels like a proper album for the first time since Plastic Beach, a concept which more than hits the mark, a cycle of music from start to finish which asks questions and reveals little in the way of answers. The world doesn’t have them.

What it does have is solace and love. It’s something we don’t see nearly enough of in the current year. But just as they have done so many times in the past, Gorillaz and the men behind it have put out something that means a lot. Sometimes, that matters more than anything else.