Gorillaz took the stage at the Aragon Ballroom last Sunday night to the opening calls of, “Hello? Is anyone there?” from the song “M1 A1” off their 2001 debut. And with that, the audience was confronted, in true Pink Floyd fashion, by the backlit silhouettes of the band (notably including Blur’s Damon Albarn, Del tha Funky Homosapien, and Cibo Matto’s Miho Hatori), who performed the entire show behind a semi-transparent screen while a cartoon character counterpart for each band member moved about on a separate screen above the stage.
In toying with the conventional distance between audience and performer, the group also self-referentially poked fun at overblown pop culture. Disjointed Japanese phrases shot across the screen in Day-Glo colors, and it was telling when the phrase “multimedia hand job” flashed across the screen in huge black-and-white letters.
Not that this performance was exclusively an artistic statement. Short films involving the cartoon band members playing fighting video games and jumping each other on tricycles played periodically between songs. Underneath the projections, co-vocalist Albarn found time to remove his pants while playing the melodica.
As opposed to the dry over-production of their debut album, the live performance gave Gorillaz a chance to throw their sonic weight around. Songs like “5/4,” “M1 A1,” and “Punk” finally got the thrashing-drum, feedback-soaked sound they always deserved. Del added new rhymes referencing MTV’s Kurt Loder to “Rock the House” and “Clint Eastwood.” Even the acoustic “Sound Check (Gravity)” worked well in the translation.
The most disappointing moment of the night had to be producer extraordinaire Dan “The Automator” Nakamura’s DJ set to open the show. Bling-blingin’ in a gray T-shirt and an obscenely large necklace complete with an eagle pendant, Nakamura did nothing more than play the role of high school dance DJ by playing House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and Digital Underground’s “Humpty Dance” in their entirety.
Taking a final stab at their own overexposure, Gorillaz replayed “5/4” and “Clint Eastwood” for their encore set. Even Del’s rap on “Clint Eastwood” changed very little from the first version of the night. Perhaps this was another tongue-in-cheek reference to the narcissistic pop world Gorillaz purport to mock. Or perhaps it just explained why the first track on their debut album is titled “Re-Hash.” nyou
