When “Clint Eastwood” hit airwaves in 2001, Gorllaz were immediately pigeonholed as “that cartoon rap group.”

Four years later, “Feel Good Inc.” dropped, surprising everyone with just how good a cartoon rap group could be. But even the strength of that single couldn’t prepare us for the genius of the complete Demon Days.

The tracks run the gamut from slicked back punk (“O Green World”) to IDM dub (“All Alone”) to Afrobeat hip hop (“Dirty Harry”) to electrocoustic (“El Mañana”) to gospel (“Don’t Get Lost in Heaven”), all without a bad track (some might skip “November Has Come” based on its first ten seconds, but that’s a tragic mistake).

And good gracious, the bass lines up in this beast! There’s a reason the animated Murdock is the de facto leader of the group. Danger Mouse wisely fattens the bass up and douses it in drippy, dubby reverb throughout the whole record, which is the reason our heads all bob every time the record plays.

But behind all of the cartoons and curtains, the evil genius Damon Albarn pulls every string. And the cohesiveness of an album with nearly thirty contributors is testament to Albarn’s tremendous genius.

In Demon Days, he joins artists like Peter Gabriel whose solo work suggests that their main band, however acclaimed, actually held them back. On the strength of this record, Damon Albarn stopped being “that guy from Blur,” and Gorillaz were no longer thought of as a gimmick, but recognized as one of the bravest forces in popular music.