Gorillaz have always sounded more human than a cartoon band should. The creation of Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl animator Jamie Hewlett, their gimmick seems like it ought to have made for nothing more than a disposable pop act—an early-2000s curiosity meant to disappear alongside nü metal and anyone taking Chris Martin seriously. Instead, Gorillaz have maintained relevance, continuing to release albums not just sonically but politically of their moment. Over 17 years, across massive changes in global governments and seismic shifts in Western culture, a quartet of monkey-ish cartoons has persisted as the grinning face of our hopes and fears.
Their latest, Humanz, is testament to this bizarre strength. An album responding to a modern world where fascism has returned to mainstream politics, where the worst-case scenarios of Donald Trump and Brexit have been realized, it’s still also a record of palatable dance tracks presented by animated figures. This is clear from its start. Vince Staples introduces Humanz’s premise through a first song that rockets forward with gut-rending indignation. The caffeinated snares and digitized bass drum bounce of “Ascension” sound cheery enough, but Staples’ chorus says something far less hopeful: “The sky’s falling, baby/Drop that ass ‘fore it crash.” Throughout his verses, he masks outrage at American racism with a narrative apparently about nothing more than trying to find someone to hook up with. It sounds like a club song. But by the end of “Ascension,” the pretense is dropped along with, for a few bars, that propulsive snare. There’s nothing left but a low static hum by the time Staples calls the “land of the free” a place “where you can live your dreams as long as you don’t look like me.” A distorted scream clips in immediately after the last syllable of his verse.
It’s a statement of intent that can be missed on a first listen, but never again afterward once it becomes clear that Humanz’s pop is a vital political statement. This isn’t a new move for the band, but even after nearly two decades, it still comes as a bit of a surprise. The playfulness of Gorillaz as an act, from the name (that goofy “z”) through to the conceit that these songs are, in fact, performed by a group of cartoons, has always acted as a buffer for the seriousness of its politics. Just below the surface, though, the band’s intent has always been clear.
Gorillaz’s 2000 debut embraced the end point of turn-of-the-century trip-hop with songs about trying to locate and preserve a semblance of humanity in an increasingly digital world (“Tomorrow Comes Today,” “Sound Check (Gravity),” and “Clint Eastwood” in particular). 2005’s Demon Days presented the disillusionment of the ongoing Iraq War (“Dirty Harry”) and George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency (“November Has Come”) as an end-of-days concept album complete with Dawn of the Dead samples. In 2010, Plastic Beach centered on environmental degradation and a failing global economy with songs like “Rhinestone Eyes,” “Sweepstakes,” and “Some Kind of Nature.”
That Humanz would follow suit, addressing the rise of nativism, racism, and hyper capitalism, is not surprising. It is, in essence, a dance album. Aside from “Ascension,” there’s “Submission,” a sunny pop song where a metronome drum-machine beat bounces along until Danny Brown steps in with a verse that includes lines like the welcomingly on-the-nose "it all comes down to the mighty dollar/greed and lust, abusing power." There’s “Strobelite,” where Peven Everett sings, "Are we just too far to be as one again?" over a laid-back ’80s soul track so positive and clean on its surface, it risks devolving into Muzak cheese. There’s “Let Me Out,” which straightforwardly alternates a singalong chorus of Mavis Staples belting, “Change is coming/You’d best be ready” with an uncharacteristically sedate Pusha T delivering lines like “Tell me there's a chance for me to make it off the streets/Tell me that I won't die at the hands of the police.”
Humanz, like the rest of Gorillaz’s work, avoids direct references just enough to skirt categorization as a purely political album. It is, on the surface, a good-times record full of songs whose darkness is masked by Albarn’s seemingly affectless cool, a packed lineup of guest performers, and the overriding joy of solid hooks. Like a lot of the best pop, it hides its full purpose behind the universality of simple lyrics that unfold with repeated listens.
This is its greatest success. Pop’s power is its broad appeal—the ability to invite listeners to discover more of the song simply because they’re happy to return to it again and again. The message conveyed by good pop might not be immediately apparent (“Rock the Casbah”; “Born in the U.S.A.”; almost any Grimes single), but once it clicks, it’s easy to hear that it’s been there all along. Gorillaz have always exaggerated this effect, literally manufacturing the band’s image as a colorful group of cartoons and writing songs whose politics aren’t readily apparent. As a band, they’re unassuming. Their statements, presented simply and discovered only through the listener’s attention, come across with the kind of sincerity that’s pop’s trademark.
Pop’s other trademark, of course, is that it’s easy to miss the point. By communicating the message of a song subtly, its realization can be more powerful, but it can also remain hidden unless it's listened to more closely. (Check “Born in the U.S.A.”’s use as patriotic rallying cry.) As a cartoon dance band, Gorillaz risk this even more than anyone else on the radio. Their lyrics might not be subtle, but the accessibility of their sound and apparent frivolity of their colorful avatars makes it easy to dismiss their work. But this is why Humanz makes its most overt political statement in the band’s nearly two-decade career. The video for the lead single “Hallelujah Money” foregrounds the decidedly not-cartoon face of singer Benjamin Clementine. His eyes are set on the viewer throughout; images of kabuki theater and perverse Americana, including archival footage of marching Klansman, play behind him. The video’s release on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration is a direct statement that forces listeners to identify Humanz’s political substance.
It’s a step that amplifies the heart that’s always beat to the rhythm of Gorillaz’s dance tracks. It makes Humanz's purpose clearer, easier to hear the impassioned eulogy to—and plea for the revival of—the basic principles of love, equality, and honesty. In the context of 2017’s political landscape, that’s a message that deserves to be heard as loudly as possible.