Gorillaz — The Now Now ANALYSIS & REVIEW

Published 07/08/2018

Its hits and misses were rather obvious to me, but overall the music’s strength of using a multitude of synthetic leads in a congenial manner to create a chill groove mostly carried through and made this a good listen. The timbre was indeed the most compelling element, as the atmosphere was dominated — in a positive way — by multiple synthesizer layers with different roles that matched their tone. The block chord foundations in songs like “Humility” and “One Percent”, mostly built on stacks of thirds, was nicely given to an innocuous, wavy synth pad reminiscent of the funk and soul of popular music 40 years prior. When the harmony had a quicker, more triadic three or four chord loop like in “Tranz” or “Lake Zurich”, which gave a different lighter and energetic atmosphere, it was rightfully a single synth bass or square tone lead giving the root motion and adding on as the phrase progressed. The synths were chosen well and the sound was certainly never overbearing, however it was a little unfortunate that the texture stayed rather thin and within this small, groovy circle throughout, only branching out a bit with guitar in the song “Idaho” that proved to make little altered impact. I think there was room to simply thicken the texture or go even bigger with dynamic shifts in either important chorus moments or to really sell one of the more rhythmically driven progressions. The greats within this realm today are able to do this while still keeping balance and ease in tact. Still, textural variety within this controlled circle was done quite well here, especially in the multitude of synthesizer techniques and sequences.

What raises this album to the respectable, enjoyable level it’s on is the thought and attention on basic harmonic presence. The harmonies played a strong supplemental role in the mood, and even eclipsed the overall sound in some cases. However, some songs fell a bit flat in finding important color and direction from harmony, which created the noticeable weak spots of the experience. I alluded to two different types of harmonic foundations used on this album: the block chords with a jazz-like fusion to them, and the traceable one-note loops. Overall, the latter was much more convincing and successful in bringing out emotion through good direction and development, as I mentioned previously about beefing up the chords overtime from the simple bass line. The use of mixed meter was especially important in providing interest and nuance, like back and forth between 4/4 and 2/4 in the song “Kansas”. While typically found more in the faster tracks, this harmonic captivation had nothing to do with tempo; the very slow song “Fire Flies” also achieved good harmonic momentum from bass line embellishments and understandable tonic-subdominant movement. On the other hand, the more upbeat song “Hollywood” had a harmonic layer off in its own world with no great sense of grounding and unnecessary uses of static non-chord tones that didn’t lead anywhere. That song also happened to have the weakest melodic motive, with a boring chorus made up of only “mi” and “do”.

Sadly, melody was typically a bit too aimless, and while rightfully staying in the background well to try and let the sound lure the ears in first, there was potential to build off of singular melodic lines that could have given a stronger memorability factor or grow this music into something more meaningful then its basic chill, groovy outlook. I don’t think the vocals did particularly well in adding a crucial, needed layer to the music, both in their sonic manipulations or range they gave to melody, although they held their end of the rope in terms of maintaining the neat groovy atmosphere. At least the lines were organized well within the form, having repetitions that outlined sections and made the experience a bit more sensible. Ultimately, given the group’s ability and talent to experiment with synthesizer combinations, I think it actually would’ve been nice for the overall song construction to go down a more non-sensible path, possibly putting less restraint on sonic growth or patterns of material. Either that, or building off one succinct melodic idea that can really be sold. Neither happened here, although it was still enjoyable. Check it out if you like a modern groove, as there are some individual standouts here.