Five years after its formation and the success, a few months later, of the single "Clint Eastwood", the virtual group Gorillaz has mainly become, musically, the business of Damon Albarn. Since Dan The Automator, solid partner of the first album, left to produce Franz Ferdinand, the singer of Blur naturally found himself at the head of the virtual combo and requested, to compensate, the presence of a slew of stars including De La Soul, Neneh Cherry, Shaun Ryder or Dennis Hopper.
Boosted by the excellent first single "Feel Good Ink" and the no less effective "Last Living Souls" or "Dirty Harry" (definitely an obsession), "Demon Days" offers a mouth-watering mixture of hip-pop and electro-dub, all covered in danceable world music (à la Tom Tom Club). The lyrics themselves, polished and heavy with meaning ("Kids With Guns", "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead") give the impression of having escaped from a laboratory. Above all, they confirm that Damon Albarn continues to soar well above the lot and the average, by offering an extremely intelligent and therefore absolutely not trendy album...