"In the Sixties, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, people take Prozac to make it normal."
- Damon Albarn
"New Genious (Brother)" (or "New Genius (Brother)", depending on how much of a stickler you are on proper grammar) is one of the odder tracks on Gorillaz debut record. The song revolves around a drum and vocal sample from a Bo Diddley cover of Odetta's "Hit Or Miss" and a chilling backing vocal provided by Miho Hatori. Jason Cox doubles the rhythmic drum sample with his own drumming providing a complex and swinging combination. Junior Dan is also on this track, adding in smooth dubby bass lines to go on top of the song's percussion heavy trip hop groove. Damon mainly focuses on his vocals here, only occasionally interjecting with a couple of melodica solos and a very convincing "string" synthesizer (could have fooled me, I thought it was a string quartet).
Despite Damon's present force as a vocalist with his wispy falsetto, it is hard to tell what he is actually saying. He talks about living in his own world, people passing right through him and even killing a man ("In a pressure today, I blew a bad man away today. Had a gun, had to be done, blew a man away"). The hook (shown in the title picture) talks about not trusting strangers, so perhaps this song is from the perspective of a psychologically tormented man who realizes his negative affect on society. The song is a haunting track that wouldn't seem out of place on "Mezzanine", Massive Attack's darkest record, so I wouldn't be surprised if the beat Dan The Automator, Kid Koala, Jason Cox and Junior Dan made just gave Damon the idea to write a really dark lyric. The album version of the track fades out while Damon scats over Miho's vocals and the song's looped groove, however the song does have a formal ending. In the Gorillaz mockumentary "Charts Of Darkness", "New Genious" plays over the end credits. This version ends with the all the samples suddenly stopping, leaving Jason Cox to finish the song off while 2D (played by Nelson De Freitas) grunts and moans over it.
"New Genious (Brother)" was the only song from Gorillaz debut record that wasn't played live on the band's first tour. This could be because the song required two drummers and a percussion section to be played live, which would have been hard for live drummer and Gorillaz writer, Cass Browne, to recreate alone (however they could have used the drum sample on stage as they had Darren Galea on turntables touring with them, the true reason why they never played this track remains unfortunately unknown). This song along with many others from Gorillaz early catalog will probably never see the light of day again, as Damon can no longer sing falsetto as well as he could when he was younger. "New Genious" is one of Gorillaz most menacing tracks and one of their more straight forward takes on the trip hop style and should remain a vital and essential part of the Gorillaz catalog, despite it's lack of presence at the band's live shows.
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