Humanz is the long awaited 2017 album from the famed virtual band, Gorillaz. This is their fifth studio album and the first proper one since 2010’s Plastic Beach. Gorillaz were at the peak of their creativity with Plastic Beach in my opinion as they managed to create a varied, feature-heavy album with smooth transitions and an overlying concept. Albarn has been on a creative streak since then with the well reviewed Blur comeback album, The Magic Whip, and his first solo album, Everyday Robots. As a result of those promising records, along with the heavy promotion Humanz received, it was one of the years most anticipated albums. However, Humanz is an underwhelming effort from them. There’s aspects of it that are flawlessly executed, such as the “party for the end of the world” concept they were going for, but the sum of its parts is noticeably weaker than their past efforts.

Humanz starts with a brief introduction, followed by what is arguably the strongest song on the album, “Ascension”. Long Beach rapper, Vince Staples, steals the spot for best feature right from the beginning. His verses are strikingly political with Albarn’s signature subdued vocals interspersed between them. Despite the political nature of the lyrics, Albarn made it clear that the album contains no direct references to Trump as he doesn’t “want to give the most famous man on earth any more fame”. In fact, his name was censored at one or two points. Staples focuses on racial tensions on the third verse, which contains some darkly clever lines. That topic is covered again on “Let Me Out” on a Pusha T verse. However, for every song that has a serious tone, there’s a song like “Momentz” or “Sex Murder Party” that lessens the impact of the lyrics. “Saturnz Barz”, which was among the many singles for the album, didn’t grab me at first but works well within the context of the album. The droning, underlying beat laced with electronic flourishes, in addition to the vocals being seamlessly being traded off between Damon and Popcaan, lead to it being a standout. “Momentz”, which features De La Soul, is the “Sweepstakes” of Humanz. Fans will be divided and it’s a song you’ll either love or hate, which on this album is a good thing. At the very least it’s memorable. The driving, clunky beat somehow works alongside a children’s choir and rapid fire lines being traded off. The outro recalls the spoken word sections of older Gorillaz material and is what the interludes should have been. Despite the inclusion of interludes, the album somehow ends up being the most disjointed in their discography. The interludes in Humanz are necessary to segue between the different ideas and styles the album explores but they aren’t always smooth transitions. “Submission”, which features Kelela and Danny Brown, creates one of the best builds and rap verses of the album, with both artists taking the spotlight in equal measure. “Charger” is the first Damon-led song, which takes an industrial sounding looped beat and lays Damon’s trance-like singing over it. Side B wraps up with two more Albarn-led tracks, “Andromeda” and “Busted And Blue”, which are refreshing after the feature-heavy first half. “Busted And Blue” is especially good and recalls the sparse, punctuated soundscape of Damon’s solo album. “Let Me Out”, which is led by Pusha T and Mavis Staples, is a late album highlight with political lyrics and verses, akin to “Ascension”, making an appearance. “She’s My Collar” is a fun, Damon-led song but would be more suited to a B-sides album.

Fortunately, Humanz concludes with two of the strongest songs, “Hallelujah Money” and “We Got The Power”. On “Hallelujah Money” Benjamin Clementine’s powerful, haunting vocals command your attention. His voice is honestly unlike anything else I’ve heard before and is my favorite artist I’ve discovered through Gorillaz. “Hallelujah Money” is the type of collaboration and song Gorillaz do best and worked perfectly being dropped as the lead single just before inauguration day. “We Got The Power”, which features Noel Gallagher, Albarn’s former Britpop rival, wraps up the album in a spectacular fashion. On its own it might not hold up but it’s the perfect way to end the album. It’s the most upbeat song on the album and has the brightest, most optimistic lyrics, “We got the power to be loving each other / No matter what happens”. As a whole, Humanz sounds more like a mixtape of Damon produced collaborations than a Gorillaz album, but still features quite a few strong tracks. With a few of the songs that don’t add anything to the album trimmed off it could stand up with the rest of their discography.

The underlying problem with Humanz is the lack of focus, which causes the album to lose the Gorillaz identity. Their records have always been feature heavy, but they’ve never felt forced or overshadowed Albarn, as they do on Humanz. There’s supposedly a lot of leftover material from the Humanz sessions and I can’t be sure how much of it will be worth releasing. Humanz would’ve gone from good to great with a few of the filler tracks cut off. If the album is treated similarly to G Sides and D-Sides it will be a lot easier to digest as the lack of cohesiveness won’t matter.

Pressing Details: This is the standard pressing released by Parlophone Records. It’s a 2xLP housed in a gatefold jacket with two printed inner sleeves. As always, Jamie Hewlett’s art is as essential to Gorillaz as the music, so the front cover, back cover, and inner gatefold feature detailed images of the updated characters. The two inner sleeves feature more artwork along with credits on the back. Parlophone pressings are almost all high quality in my experience and Humanz is no exception. There’s a perfect contrast between the loud, booming songs like “Momentz” to the melancholic songs similar to “Busted And Blue”. There’s a little bit of surface noise on my copy near the start of a few songs but nothing that distracts from the music. Overall it’s a quality pressing and is likely to be one of the best selling vinyl records of the year. If you’re a fan of either the music or the artwork the standard pressing is worth picking up.

The standard pressing of Humanz is available on vinyl from Amazon here.