Another Hill to Climb
Following straight on from yesterdays post, after listening to “Fool on the Hill” by The Beatles, my mind immediately turned to Gorillaz! I found another hill to climb…
Why Gorillaz? Well, specifically their 2010 album Plastic Beach and the track “On Melancholy Hill”. I link the two tracks in my mind. Obviously ‘Hill’ appears in the title of both and also, the melancholy nature of this song matches a little with The Beatles’ track.
Up on a hill, looking out, this time on the island of Plastic Beach. The storytelling here makes me want to be up there, under the plastic tree, contemplating…
Plastic Beach
Plastic Beach is first and foremost a ‘pop’ album. However, with Damon Albarn pulling together such a diverse mix of talented individuals to create Plastic Beach, for me, it transcends its throwaway pop nature. The ‘advertising hook > consume > discard’ nature of pop could have seen this go the way of a plastic bottle. It would have floated away to join the plastic mountain congregating in the sea. Just some more jetsam from an uncaring world.
No, not so. For me, this album contains some fantastic songs: from the Orchestral Intro, through Dogg’s Welcome… I have just realised, I could go on but I would just recite every track on the album. The songs are elevated above just ‘pop’ by their subject matter and execution. If I had to pick one track, I couldn’t really. Don’t make me, please. But if I had to pick one track, it would be “Glitter Freeze” featuring Mark E. Smith – man, it’s sooooo good! I also love “On Melancholy Hill” also, which is what got me into the post in the first place.
I played the CD version of this album through before writing this. It sounded just as good as when I first heard it. If not better. I bought it as soon as it came out, in Brighton if I remember rightly. That was back in the days when you could actually go out somewhere! Anywhere!
I know the vinyl version was released recently (I think it was a Picture Disc). I’d like to track that down, if only for a bigger version of the artwork by Jamie Hewlett. I think its electronic nature wouldn’t be that enhanced by vinyl. I may be wrong.
I’ve decided I’ll do a more in depth look at this album later, as for this blog post, I wanted to link the album’s ‘hill’ with the last post’s ‘hill’.
Important
This album is ever more important as 11 years have past and we still haven’t started to address the mountain of plastic consumed and dumped.
Play this album and I’m gonna use less plastic!
Album: Plastic Beach
Artist: Gorillaz
Release Year: 2010
Label: Parlophone / EMI Records
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