Now that the dust has settled, what the fuck went wrong?

now that the dust has settled, what the fuck went wrong?

They got too political this time.

It was like Gorillaz first album but with more black people

Damon lost it trying to make his solo, Blur and Gorillaz in rapid succession.

lack of polish.

Lot of interesting ideas/appearances on songs but a complete lack of cohesion compared to any of the previous albums. A lot of the songs work for what they are but it feels more like a half-assed mixtape than anything meant to be sequenced as an album. Also, some of the most pointless interludes to ever exist.

This

nailed it

It's basically alt-left: the album.

the album has 3 political tracks and was recorded before Trump won the election

Damon stopped caring about it. Pure cash grab

For one a lot of the features felt like they could have been placed better
Felt less like a Gorillaz album and more like "here's some of Damon's favorite artists on an album together"
Lacked too much "2D" compared to previous albums
Half of the thing should've been chopped
Some of the bonus tracks better than some in the non deluxe track list
Basically this

Also want to mention that Damon told the artists her was collabing with to imagine a world where trump wins
So it is a political album

how is it a political album when most of the songs don't even mention politics at all?
what happens behind the scenes is irrelevant to the judgement of the final product

Good goy

They have some really good songs on this album.

Black and Blue, Andromeda, Submission.

I'm not sure why so much hate for this album. Andromeda alone made this album worth.

The album was kinda underwhelming, listen to demon days. The Idea is way more cohesive here the traxks are good but the concept is underpresented

How does 1 track out of 20 make the whole album worth?

Yeah, this sums it up. There's no overall style or feeling to the album, like in Plastic Beach which felt brighter and was more electronic than Demon Days, which felt darker and more rock-influenced.
Humanz just felt like a random collection of collabs Damon really wanted to do with no theme or style tying it together.

Andromeda alone made this album worth for me.

My bad should have elaborated more.

All good, I'm glad you enjoy it.

fuck off Sup Forums, we're trying to have an actual discussion here

I have a hard time pushing through the entire album, that is a sign of a bad album for me.

Tbh, I don't really know the songs that come after Busted and Blue.

That's a good place to stop listening, I guess.

I'm actually hoping that someone who loves the album more can help me appreciate some of the other songs.

Have yet to listen to the rest of the album. Have only listened to Ascension, Andromeda, Saturnz Barz, and Let Me Out--additionally these are the only ones I like so far. I've heard snippets of some other songs, but wasn't all that interested to even give them a go.

The Apprentice, Ticker Tape, Momentz, Charger, Sleeping Powder and Busted And Blue are all phenomenal

sleeping powder isn't on the album
it's also shit

I feel like there was a couple things wrong. Russel said it in a " interview" about their song "last living souls" "[our song] is the symphonic battle of both digital and acoustic music." This new is all digital with little to no acoustics and looses (at least for me) it's authenticity. I always associated Gorillaz with being on the fine line between parody and sincerity but I feel that this new album is neither of them and the just threw it out just to keep the fans happy. It's also very unfocused and for Gorillaz that's saying something, I'm not really sure how to describe it, it just feels like a damon albarn mix tape ft. various artist rather than a Gorillaz album, maybe because of the lack of the actual Gorillaz. I don't know people there are so many problem with this album it's hard to do it in one sitting, i might come back tomorrow.

I wish I could listen to Empire Ants again for the first time.

You're definitely on to something with the sincerity/satire comment, I never thought about it like that but it's a good way to describe Gorillaz' songwriting and this album really does lack that feeling. These tracks aren't tongue-in-cheek pop songs in the same way things like Superfast Jellyfish, Clint Eastwood, or DARE were.

I think because the political stuff is more blatant in Humanz compared to in the previous albums - which had some politics in them, but were a lot more subtle and thus can be enjoyed as non-political songs or by people with differing opinions.

>Dirty Harry
>Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head
>Kids With Guns
>the entire concept of Plastic Beach
>subtle

Plastic Beach was an album that Damon Albarn poured his heart and soul into. It had a great variety of guests, and was musically much grander. Humanz feels rushed, even though it was released after a 7 year hiatus, and the guests were just 2017 flavor of the week rappers. This album just felt like Damon wanted to use Gorillaz to cash in on the sjw internet age.

Damon took so much offense to the Trump administration that he deliberately went out of his way to make the most dissonant, lazy pop album he could muster, while simultaneously launching his strongest American marketing plan with it to con us into buying it.

The only other possibilities are early onset dementia or heroin in the studio. Its so uncharacteristic of Damon, even after his flop of a solo album. You can tell he at least tried on that one, whereas this is devoid of any effort at all. The voice actors for the characters and Jamie carried this phase entirely.

Strangely and perhaps unrelatedly, I wasn't evem able to attend the Gorillaz date for my local venue due to never being sent my tickets, despite being sent my physical copies of the CD as part of the package deal by Warner Brothers. I got a refund, but just a lot of fishiness this go around and I hope he makes up for it in a big way before putting the project to bed.

Not even remotely. S/T had Dan the Automater on most production, and he's practically the spiritual successor to Nujabes. There was no one even close to that level of talent on this record. Danny Brown and De la Soul are talented as rappers, sure, but even their performances were completely mismanaged and misdirected.

These are unfortunately plausible explainations as well. He's probably self aware of his limited musical relevance these days and wanted to collect one last big check before retiring, just like Tegam & Sara have been doing.

A lot of this album is still extremely unconventional by pop music standards and about half the guest features are outside the scope of anyone pop music fans would care about at all. You can argue that he's phoning it in but there's no way in hell this is equivalent to the same level of cashing in as the Abercrombie and Fitch/Forever 21core that Tegan & Sara make now.

If it were a cash grab, it would have far bigger names. He got caught up his grampa life lesson message and didn't invest enough into the actual sound.

Unconventional would imply deliberate experimentation. It literaly sounds like Damon got high as a kite, dicked around on a keyboard and went with the first take for most songs. "Unconventional" is too kind and lenient for what the main tracks deserve, & thats before the worthless "interludes"

You should check out his semi recent interview on Sway in the Morning. He speaks of and to Americans with a disdain now that he never had before. Something is definitely up.