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.
Some people have called the cover photo for this album ironic. And of course it is, right? Indie artpop god David Longstreth teaching some old country dude how to play air guitar? Hilarious!
Although listening to this album, I’m not sure there’s anything ironic about it. Longstreth isn’t mocking the fellow. He’s teaching him. He wants him to get it. He wants us all to get it. And that’s what’s special about this record.
What is pop music? Is it vapid, unchallenging, artless? Few would make an argument that most pop music is not those things. But can pop be more than that? Can pop music be ambitious? Sophisticated? Enduring? Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra make a certainly convincing argument for that stance on their magnum opus, Out of the Blue.
Usually, records this obtuse and dense don’t end up being very significant, let alone making any sort of appearance on the Billboard 200 (this peaked at #65). And while it may not necessarily sound weird sonically, like the acoustic guitar that accompanies mastermind David Longstreth’s tenor on the intro of Temecula Sunrise, whatever is going on here is enough to confound, like the rhythmic detours that same intro takes between measures, or the lyrics that pay no mind to the meter of the line singing them.
It’s fitting that Hunky Dory opens with the classic single “Changes”: the record is much more diverse musically than the albums that preceded (I think–I’m not familiar with The Man Who Sold The World, but it doesn’t seem to have the significance of either Space Oddity or Hunky Dory).
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