For nonbelievers, it’s the final tip of a un-event, of a wandering concept piece without centre and a lot of flash-and-fizzle features for the sake of features. Albarn mesmerizingly chants two-beat dichotomies through his cartoon avatar that “ It’s all good news now / Because we left the taps, running, for a hundred years / So drink into the drink, plastic cup drink / Drink with the purple, the people / The plastic-eating people / Still connected, to the moment, it began”.Īnd that’s that - the album finishes out, the jazzy, glistering synths fading into the beat of a single key. A gloomy or peppy perspective, depending on how you cut it - there’s something of David Bowie’s “ Chant of the Ever-Circling Skeletal Family” about it, a woozy posi-negative that sort of hurts to think about. The repeat of “man-made” and “phony clothes” in the choruses sure seems like a reference to Fast Fashion.Īs fictional band member Niccals aptly remarked, the album’s final song, Pirate Jet “takes the album out swinging, a finale with shuddering jazz hands: “Did you like the show? It was called PLANET EARTH”. “ Well me, I like plastics / And digital foils,” Reed ironically drones, “ To wrap up the sound / And protect the girls / From the spiritual poison / You spill at night”. “ Some Kind of Nature” is made all the more bittersweet with the passing of Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground who dominates this eerily sorrowful song. And the rap doesn’t stop there, with at-the-time rising star grime rappers Kano and Bashy spitting over the follow-up track “White Flag,” an orchestral blend with bassy plastic percussion. Snoop is our Chorus, our beautiful narrator, as he lisps, “ The revolution will be televised / An’ the pollution from the ocean, now with devotion / Push peace and keep it in motion… I know it seems like the world is so hopeless / It’s like Wonderland”. The fictional world’s first full-length song, “ Welcome to the World of Plastic Beach”, has Snoop rapping over a laid back beat punctuated by brassy blares. Picture the above, and then add Snoop Dogg. Upon discovering the rotting ocean landfill, the band decides to pour a bunch of concrete on it, paint it pink, and plant a filthy modernist masterpiece of a house on top of it. The band’s pragmatic and, uh, fictitious bassist Murdoc Niccals discovers the place as he flees the rest of humanity. Situated at “Point Nemo,” the album’s narrative has all of humanity’s waste, piled hand over fist into the oceans for decades collecting at the furthest point from land on Planet Earth, coagulating on the surface of the sea. Plastic Beach was a place - it existed in real life, albeit as a 1/32 model of the conceptual house. Even more mind-blowing at the time was the album’s gimmick. I was listening to bands like The Unicorns (lo-fi indie pop-rock), The Strokes (post-punk garage rock), and early Arctic Monkeys - everything-and-the-kitchen-sink music like Plastic Beach, mixing orchestral string movements with grime rap, discotheque, noise rock, as far as I was concerned, didn’t exist. At the time, I was heavy into art and design and architecture, even considering it as a career. I can’t remember what hooked me first: the music or the visuals. NME ironically named it #77 on its “Albums of the Decade List” - renowned YouTube-based reviewer Anthony Fantony would dub it the #13 in his own list, claiming it to be the “most exciting concept, guest list, and production to land on any Gorillaz record.” Standing between album #2 and #4 - the relative monocultures of Demon Dayz and the follow-up Humanz (2017) - the flashy insanity of Plastic Beach’s sprawling 18-track mess seemed to shine a little brighter. Plastic Beach would end up about par review-wise, settling at a comfortable 77 on Metacritic, snug between Gorillaz’ 71 and Demon Days’ 82.īut the album saw an end-of-decade uptick as critics cast their eyes back, fishing for christened classics. Gorillaz went platinum its sophomore follow-up Demon Days (2005) would go double-platinum. Despite debuting at #2 on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200, the album wouldn’t break the records of its predecessors. Though not as universally recognized as the groups first (self-titled) album Gorillaz (2001), Plastic Beach enjoyed a bit of a late, late renaissance following its release in 2010. What we’re concerned with is the group’s third album-length project, the prophetic, depressingly titled Plastic Beach (2010). There’s ten billion think-pieces and stink-pieces about what the Gorillaz are or are not if you’ve never heard of them, here’s the Wikipedia page.