Gorillaz, Live Now, review: brilliant, zany and exhausting, with all-star flair
Sir Elton John made a guest appearance as a Disney-style cartoon, sci-fi singer-songwriter Beck beamed in from LA as a dad-dancing hologram, The Cure’s Robert Smith descended from the moon to sing choruses of Strange Timez, rappers Kano and Slowthai fired off splenetic verses with a 10-piece band, New Order’s Peter Hook delivered a gnarly bass with customary belligerence, and comedian Matt Berry appeared in a cape to read a twisted fairy tale with all the fruity melodrama of his Toast of London. Part all-star virtual jamboree, part mixed-media art installation, the Gorillaz livestream concert extravaganza was as exhausting to watch as it must have been to participate in.
If any band seem custom built for online socially-distanced gigging, it is surely Gorillaz. The gleefully demented invention of Blur’s musical mastermind Damon Albarn and comic book illustrator Jamie Hewlett, this colourful cartoon quartet don’t actually exist in a corporeal sense. The usual problem the creative team face when performing live is translating their zany, youth-centric visual identity into a physical, real world setting in which braindead pin-up vocalist 2-D is impersonated by a grizzled middle-aged Britpop veteran.
To be fair, they have got rather good at it over the years, becoming arena favourites with a vast ensemble of players, lots of onscreen visuals and a rota of special guests. Online should be their ideal medium, if only because Hewlett’s vivid animations could potentially take leading roles rather than being reduced to supporting parts. Oddly, perhaps, this is not how it played out in a frenetically busy display in which the multi-talented Albarn held centre-stage throughout.
Gorillaz performed three concerts across the weekend, each taking place completely live and broadcast at different times to suit audiences around the world. That represented an ambitious undertaking, since the trend in livestreaming has increasingly been to pre-film concerts, removing any sense of jeopardy. Each of the sets was effectively the same, however, with only minor variations in between song pattern, and Robert Smith exercising the rock star prerogative of not bothering to turn up for the first early morning broadcast on Saturday.
His replacement was his own face blended with a full moon hanging behind the band, whilst animated characters floated about as astronauts. A messy set strewn with pop culture bric-a-brac looked like the aftermath of a student party in a squat, and with roadies and camera crew scuttling about, zany graphics popping up, and guests joining in both real and virtual form, the effect was chaotically busy.
Albarn entered into the spirit in a beanie hat and pair of pink plastic sunglasses he might have borrowed from Sir Elton. He played multiple instruments including guitar, keytar, piano and omnichord, shoved his face into camera lenses at every opportunity and, at one point, started rolling around the set with a toy ray gun. It was never less than entertaining, particularly given the squelchy plastic funk-rock playing from a fantastic band, yet it was still oddly hampered by the essential disconnect between sound and visuals at the heart of the whole enterprise.
Albarn is 52 and has used Gorillaz to extend his pop career with an imagination that must be the envy of all his contemporaries. But stick a camera in front of his band, and they still look like a bunch of superannuated indie rockers making an awkward appearance on a children’s TV show.
Rather unexpectedly, following a guest-packed special effects-laden rampage through the band's latest album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, it was a stripped back side-show of old hits that proved most compelling. There was a tangible sense of joy and even relief as the band decamped to a softly lit space beneath a Christmas tree, where they could relax into semi-acoustic versions of familiar songs.
The glorious backing vocals were given room to breath, and the smile that crept on to Albarn’s face as he sang was every bit as special as all the animated effects. Even in a virtual world, somehow it was the flesh and blood experience of real musical interaction that still carried most weight.
