Now, don’t get me wrong here - I’ve been a huge Gorillaz fan since the project’s inception and have followed it eagerly since, but this album is just disappointing.The album overall, from the imagery to the music itself, has a very strong hipster vibe. It’s aiming for a more 80s electronic sound (sorry, I mean “aesthetic”), which of course isn’t a bad thing in itself, it just smacks of trying to sound ‘cool’ instead of just actually being cool.Humility was a promising single, and that along with Tranz and Hollywood are album highlights. However, the rest of the tracks are totally forgettable. In fact, the album seems to end just as it was about to get interesting again.Sonically, it doesn’t sound good at all. It’s mixed to emphasise the lower frequencies (i.e. it’s way too bassy) to such an extent that the songs themselves are too quiet and become overwhelmed by the bass.The best thing I can say about it is that it’s nice to hear 2D/Damon (you know, the lead singer) on vocals again - ‘Plastic Beach’ suffered from too many features and ‘Humanz’ was major overkill.Gorillaz are clearly one of those artists where each album they release is never able to match the previous one. As much as I hate to be ‘that guy’ who says “But it’s not as good as their early stuff”, it’s true.In recent years, Damon Albarn has seemed to value quantity over quality, releasing ‘Humanz’ and ‘The Now Now’ in consecutive years (and this has been marketed as a major album, as opposed to a ‘G-Sides’ or ‘The Fall’ style stop-gap). It is in stark contrast to when he would spend a few years at a time creating genre-defying game-changers like ‘Gorillaz’ or ‘Demon Days’. Since then, he has been busying himself with an ever-growing list of side-projects, not giving himself the chance to put any kind of care and attention to any particular one.From ‘Plastic Beach’ onwards, he is always sure to mention how each album he records always has a few more albums worth of outtakes, but would never release any of it as a G/D-Sides style release. Now I’m starting to see why.…Or perhaps, we should just #FreeMurdoc ;)

No 5 cards here. Mine was ordered directly from the gorillaz online-store.

The Gorillaz online store doesn't have the 5 cards, that's an exclusive thing for Fnac and other physical shops, but not from the Gorillaz website unfortunately