This tour sees Gorillaz playing their first full scale American tour since their inception and it certainly seemed like the crowd were ready for it, with a capacity audience at Denvers' Wells Fargo Theatre in the mood to party. Which they did, for the most part. Gorillaz put on a really good show although it was slightly uneven in terms of mood and pace, but more on that in a bit.
First off, I am a huge fan of Damon Albarn. I think he is one of the few musicians operating who is consistantly breaking musical boundaries and showing that genres have no reason to be separated, that they can all be melded together. His work with Blur is enough to convince me of his songwriting genius and so I have happily followed him into his other projects and often been very impressed. Gorillaz most recent release, 'Plastic Beach' is one of my albums of 2010 so far, so I was very eager to see how it was reproduced live.
Well there was no worries of that front, Albarn has assembled an incredible band which has two members of The Clash on guitar (Mick Jones) and bass (Paul Simonon), along with a whole assortment of other musicians. There were two drummers, backing vocalists, a string section, another guitar player, keyboards and that's not even all as periodically whole other sections of musicans joined them on stage (The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and The American Syrian Orchestra, not to mention all of the other guests).
The band entered to the strings of 'Orchestral Intro' from the new album and then launched straight into 'Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach' complete with Snoop Dogg on giant video screens behind them and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble on horns, I counted the amount of people on stage and there were something like 25, I kept thinking that the poor guy on the mixing desk must be having a nightmare. The crowd really got going to an exuberant '19-2000' which was followed by 5 great songs in a row: 'Last Living Souls', 'Stylo' (with Bobby Womack joining in),'On Melancholy Hill', 'Rhinestone Eyes' and 'Superfast Jellyfish'. Maybe it's because several of these songs are my personal favourites but it seemed that they could have spread them out a bit, after this the whole gig seemed to slow down. It's easy to percieve the group from their cartoon image (played out behind the band on giant screens) as being very upbeat but I soon realised that some of their songs are quite the opposite. As the set progressed I was looking down on the crowd and you could clearly see which songs had everyone on their feet and then just as quickly the next song would have everybody sat back down again. This is not to say that songs such as 'Empire Ants', 'Broken' and 'To Binge' aren't good, they really are but their placing in the set definitely affected the pace of it.
Albarn (as anyone who has ever seen Blur live can testify) is a supremely confident and energetic frontman and he was often right at the front of the crowd throwing high-fives with the audience and interacting with them. A slightly confused Bobby Womack (he addressed the crowd as 'Seattle, Washington') sang his heart out on 'Cloud of Unknowing' and by the time 'Feel Good Inc' started with De La Soul performing onstage the whole place was on it's feet again. A wonderful rendition of 'Clint Eastwood' should have provided the perfect close to the concert, but after that song we got two relatively slow tracks, 'Don't Get Lost In Heaven' and 'Demon Days'. To me the gig ended with a bit of a whimper and whilst those two songs were playing I was thinking about whether we were going to stop off at a bar for a drink and a bite to eat on the way home.
Top marks to Albarn and his band, the musicanship was second to none and it was an enjoyable performance but I really felt that there were a few to many lulls in the set towards the end. Still, any evening where you get to see half of The Clash, Damon Albarn and De La Soul all playing together has got to be worth the price of admission.
Setlist:
1. Orchestral Intro (extended)
2. Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (Snoop on the screens and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble on stage)
3. 19-2000
4. Last Living Souls
5. Stylo (with Bobby Womack and Bootie Brown)
6. On Melancholy Hill
7. Rhinestone Eyes
8. Superfast Jellyfish (with De La Soul, minus Maseo)
9. Tomorrow Comes Today
10. Empire Ants (with Yukimi Nagano from Little Dragon)
11. Broken (extended)
12. Dirty Harry (with Bootie Brown)
13. El Manana
14. White Flag (with Kano and Bashy and The American Syrian Orchestra)
15. To Binge (with Yukimi Nagano)
16. DARE (with Rosie Wilson)
17. Glitter Freeze
18. Punk
19. Plastic Beach
Encore:
20. Cloud of Unknowing
21. Feel Good Inc (featuring all of De La Soul)
22. Clint Eastwood (with Kano and Bashy)
23. Don't Get Lost in Heaven
24. Demon Days
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