Every Planet We Reach Is Dead

Every Planet We Reach Is Dead
Every Planet We Reach Is Dead (Demon Days Live)
Every Planet We Reach Is Dead (Demon Days Live, audio only, Ike Turner's last hurrah)

The following is an edited transcript from an interview Gorillaz did with Cass Browne for their autobiography, "Rise Of The Ogre":

" Noodle: "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead". An image of... catching a glimpse of your soul, the battlefield, from above. "I lost my land like I lost my way". This is... how d'you put it... An "unloaded question". A soft proposal to question ourselves and our decisions.

Russel: "There's a Charles Bukowski quote that's goes something like... "If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose." You can kinda hear this statement in the line, "I lost my land like I lost my way. So no loose ends, nothing to see me down. How are we going to work this out?"

Noodle: Sometimes the answer are not available. And sometimes describing the problem is a part of the solution."

"Every Planet We Reach Is Dead" comes after the climax of the "Demon Days" album, "El Mañana". The morning has hit the world, meaning they are no longer trapped in an endless night, yet nothing has changed. The feeling of hopelessness and the apocalypse 9/11 brought on to the real world was still present almost half a decade after the fact. So in this song, 2D and the band search for answers to how to fix the state of the world, only to find none.

The instrumental for this song is grand with many details hiding beneath the surface. Of all the Gorillaz songs to merge genre, this one seems to encompass the most eclectic elements from different areas. There's elements of old school blues & jazz in the percussion with it's stomping beat provided by James Dring's drums & various percussive elements such as hand claps and a Brazilian Cuica drum provided by some African street performers Damon found while recording in their country. The wah wah soaked electric guitars Damon plays evoke both smooth soulful funk players as well as post-punk noise driven players during the song's many freak outs. There are a multitude of layers of synthesizers Damon added which provide chordal bases and countermelodies bringing in an element of no wave & spaciness to the track. Jason Cox's bass guitar doubles Damon's vocal melody, a technique commonly used in old jazz recordings. Damon's falsetto vocals bring out the jazz and soul undertones of the track and make them more of a center point among the track's post-punk craziness. The London Community Gospel Choir soulfully sing backing vocals underneath him, as if Damon is a preacher in a post-apocalyptic chapel in an hour of need. But what exactly is Damon preaching to the choir?

Damon as 2D is searching for answers, he's looking through his memories to see if anything can help him. He thinks about old girlfriends ("I love the girl", "For all the sacred selfless days only left with heartbreak. See the sun coming through, but I love you. But what are we going to do?"), he thinks about his dreams which "take him deeper". At times it feels like 2D is breaking down, but not in a "Man Research" type way, in a way that's more lamentive and reflective. He realizes there's no escaping the harsh reality he's in. Time is running out ("time is a low, don't you know?"), and he can keep asking "what are we going to do?" and "how are we going to work this out?", but asking those questions won't change where the world is. The world is "dead", and so are the people who inhabit it. So 2D gives up, making this the last track with sole lead vocals by him on the album.

As the band realizes there is nothing they can do, so the track falls into chaos. James Dring's drumming gets more intense, Damon's guitars and synths get more dissonant and noisy. Instrument feedback consumes the track and a string section comes in to provide more insanity. However, the leader of all this chaos is Ike Turner on the piano. Ike Turner was one of the first pioneers of rock 'n' roll and was a brilliant guitar player. His legacy became tainted after years of physical abuse towards his wife and singing partner, soul singer Tina Turner. On this track he delivers his last great performance, a piano solo which spans the entirety of the track's outro. He leads the band like they are in a jazz club, when he gets quiet the band does too, and when he gets loud and dissonant, the multi-layerd chaos returns. During this, Jason Cox is the only sane player in the band, his bass playing providing a rhythmic basis amongst everyone's craziness. After almost two minutes of this he quiets down for the last time, only playing plaintive chords with the string section. Soon the drums and African musicians play us out, and the track quietly dissolves into nothingness. The track is "dead", the planet is "dead", and everyone's spirits die along with them.

"Every Planet We Reach Is Dead" has only been played live a couple times, all at the "Demon Days Live" showcases. At the first couple shows, Ike Turner would come out at the end to deliver an amazing piano solo and then leave. As the shows progressed, Ike Turner would come out earlier and play on the full track, duetting with Damon on piano to give the track a new intro and outro. These new additions would just be the two on piano jamming, adding even more of a jazz and soul basis to the song as well as extending the track to a grand six minutes in length. As the shows progressed however, Ike Turner's solos became more dissonant, off key and off tempo due to his addiction to crack which is not only what eventually killed him but became yet another thing which tainted his legacy. It's possible that Gorillaz never played this live again because Damon felt that the song wouldn't survive without Ike Turner leading the outro (It's also possible that they never played it in tribute to him in the same way they have done with other guests because of the horrible things he did to taint his brilliant legacy in the eyes of the public). "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead" is a great follow up to the climax of "Demon Days" and will hopefully remain a fan favorite long after the next planet within reach dies as well.

El Mañana

El Mañana
El Mañana (Demon Detour)
El Mañana (Demon Days Live)
El Mañana (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour)
El Mañana (Damon Albarn live with Demon Strings, acoustic version, 2014)
El Mañana (Damon Albarn live with backing band The Heavy Seas, 2014)
El Mañana (Humanz Live)

"The track provides a moment of internal dialogue, laid over a staccato ballad. This composition was one of the very last to be written, and provided the necessary feel for the mid-point of the record, the calm at the centre of the storm."
- Noodle

"(One of the ideas we wanted to do in the Gorillaz movie was) the world being trapped in an endless night"
- Jamie Hewlett

Ok, before we get started, let's address the elephant in the room...

No, this song is not about Noodle's death, at least that's not what it was originally intended for. This song is among one of the deepest inner monologues Damon has ever put on a record. Damon Albarn, despite being in full 2D glory on this song, is clearly writing in his own voice on a theme that often goes unnoticed in his writing, the unspoken conversation between a man and his messiah, his god.

Damon Albarn, while not being overly traditional or outspoken about it, is a very religious man. He has been quoted saying that one of his first musical interests was hearing his local church choir sing throughout the streets of Leytonstone. Damon Albarn is a religious songwriter in the same way that an artist like David Bowie is a religious songwriter. Both writers don't commit to their religion entirely and indulge in behaviors and thoughts normally thought of as "sinful", but in the end they always question themselves, often dedicating some songs to the inner dialogue of a man who knows he's not the best he can be. Both only come to god when they are in a time of need, making for a more modern look on the average Christian as opposed to the traditionalists often represented in the media. One of the beautiful things a mask or persona can do is unleash sides of someone that they couldn't before, which in a way makes 2D a better representation of Damon than his "real" voice in Blur. So with "Demon Days", Damon Albarn finally got to fully commit to making a record with gospel overtones, even going as far as using The London Community Gospel Choir as the in-house choir of backing vocalists for the record and it's respective tour.

The composition for this song is amazing and it just might be one of the best instrumentals the group has ever made. While being a soft art rock song centered around Damon's synthesizers, a string section and Simon Tong's acoustic guitar, the song has many elements that take the listener out of their comfort zone. The song has heavy flirtations with all types of "soul" music, from the classic electric piano countermelodies to the use of gospel backing vocals. On top of all this are weird experimental electric slide guitars played by Damon, a drum machine loop programmed by James Dring that is definitely meant to mimic a drum line of Damon Albarn collaborator and legend, Tony Allen, a heavy distorted bass guitar played by Jason Cox and a whooshing siren which always communicates a sense of danger and fear in the track. It's a soul record for those looking for answers to their paranoia and turmoil. Then as the instrumental is fully built up, Damon comes into the picture...

In Damon's first verse he talks about how he has lost all the sense of joy in his life. He uses the season of "summer" as a double entendre. Summer is not only a season where joy is abundant within all of it's sunshiny glory, but it is also a common name for girls. He says that "summer don't know me no more" as if he was in a relationship with the weather-girl, making the use of the word ambiguous. Damon's lyrics in this song are muddled and confusing, but the one thing we can make out is the common usage of the word "Lord". He's talking to god, in a continuation of the brief interlude of conversation they had on the album's opener, "Last Living Souls". The chorus, the song's main feature, states, "Saw that day. Lost my mind. Lord, I'm fine. Maybe in time, you'll want to be mine." He's remembering the better times, possibly the happy times he used to have in (or with) summer. But then he states it's gone now, it went with his mind, but he's doing fine, he's just hoping he can see those days again, when he was happy. Maybe god can help him find his lost soul, I mean that's the point of religion, right? Those that need guidance seek it from their savior, their lord, the all knowing one.

The English translation of the title is "the morning". The world of "Demon Days", the post-9/11 wasteland the world was in, the world that was trapped in an endless night, has now woken up. The morning marks the start of the new day, only nothing has changed. Damon hasn't found his answers, "what are we going to do?"

Of course, the song takes on a new meaning now. "El Mañana" became the last single released for the album, and the video featured Noodle being killed in a tragic crash by the villains of the phase, Jimmy Manson and his army of helicopter pilots. The video set up for a plot line in another attempt to do a Gorillaz movie in 2006 which got farther off than their original attempt in Phase 1, having big names like Terry Gilliam and Harvey Weinstein involved in the project. However, the project was eventually cancelled due to more unwanted studio tampering. In the movie Noodle would have turned out ok, but with the movie cancelled, Jamie Hewlett and Cass Browne quickly wrote it off saying that she ended up being trapped in Kong Studios' gateway to hell and would eventually make her way out. For a while though, everyone thought they actually killed off Noodle, and for good reason. Jamie and Cass purposefully built the character of Noodle up in the band's then story. They gave her more lines, she no longer said a word or two here or there, she was speaking in full English sentences.  She became the center of the band's new thematic statement, a musical presence on par with that of the singer 2D. The video, along with Damon's continued statement that "Demon Days" would be the band's last record, made fans think Noodle was actually and truly dead. Making the title a play on words, "the morning" becoming "the mourning". Regardless of what the song means to you, it is an emotional centerpiece in the band's catalogue. Damon obviously loves this song, putting it near the end of the band's setlists and going all out on the vocals with the choir during the last minute of the song. As someone who saw the band play this track live, I cannot begin to tell you how emotionally the band delivers this song on stage. "El Mañana" is a tribute to what the band is capable of and the power they have over their listeners.

Feel Good Inc.

Feel Good Inc. (Noodle's Demo)
Feel Good Inc.
Feel Good Inc. (Demon Detour, with De La Soul)
Feel Good Inc. (Demon Days Live, with De La Soul)
Feel Good Inc. (Live with Holograms, 2005)
Feel Good Inc. (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour, with De La Soul)
Feel Good Inc. (Damon Albarn live with De La Soul & backing band The Heavy Seas, 2014)
Feel Good Inc. (De La Soul live, 2014)
Feel Good Inc. (De La Soul live with Damon Albarn, 2015)
Feel Good Inc. (Live with De La Soul, 2017)

"Change"

How did this happen? A group whom were pinned as flukes and one hit wonders got another huge worldwide hit. A hit which won them awards, expanded their fanbase and was performed on the Grammys with aging pop superstar Madonna. Time had caught up with the band (or maybe it was the song's use in iPod commercials) and "Feel Good Inc." put the band in the mix of many a 2000's era indie hit makers who teenagers pretend to listen to while only listening to the group's huge mainstream crossovers.

The song's original form is one of a rough demo Damon Albarn, Danger Mouse and the "Demon Days" band made. A lot of the tracks key players are there, James Dring's layers of drums, drum machine & handclaps dueling for center stage, Simon Tong's weird slide guitar lines, Damon's multiple acoustic guitars and of course the song's main focus, Jason Cox's funky bass groove. Later Damon fleshed out his vocals making them more solid, and adding in some crazy new wave synthesizers which gave the track a vibe similar to Tom Tom Club's "Wordy Rappinghood". Later, legendary rap pioneers De La Soul were invited to 13 Studios to deliver some raps on a track of their choice. Posdunos wanted to do a rap on "Kids With Guns", but Dave and Maseo wanted to do a rap on the rough demo that was "Feel Good Inc." The raps delivered by these two added the final touches on to the track we now know and love today.

What is there to be said about this track which hasn't been said before? It's a solid groove with tight production and fantastic vocal delivery from all three of the vocalists. It begins with evil laughter from Maseo and then the beat kicks in while Damon as 2D chants "feel good". It's almost as if he's brainwashing himself to be happy in the horrible fear the world of post-9/11 feels like. However unlike a majority of the songs off "Demon Days", this one seems solely seeped in the Gorillaz universe and not as much of a commentary as the other tracks. The song might literally be about a corporation (Feel Good Inc.) which has brainwashed the people of the town to be blissfully ignorant, but 2D sees the chaos around him, and it's driving him insane. When the acoustic guitars appear during the song's bridge, it feels as if 2D has found hope a way to get out. He puts all his hope in the "windmill", the product of man made labor and not corporate greed, as a sign that there is still good authenticity left in the world. But as soon as 2D seems ok, De La Soul come out to play.

Dave & Maseo's verse seem playful with all of their references to other cartoons like Care Bears and songs by bands like Queen. But Dave & Maseo represent the "big brother" type evil from the corporation watching over the town, George Orwell style. Lining the town up ("like ass cracks"), engaging in fascist type warfare ("chocolate attack"), telling them to never stop feeling good so they don't wake up to see the chaos and destruction around them. Maseo then lets out a powerful and maniacal laugh, celebrating the success of their evil wrong doing against the town. 2D tries to to brainwash himself again by chanting "feel good" but soon he retreats back to his "windmill" in order to maintain some sort of hope about the world around him.

While the instrumental during the bridge's final repeat becomes more anthemic and hopeful, 2D seems to have lost the hope he once had, much of the optimism is delivered by Noodle (aka Damon Albarn doing a falsetto), who has remained cheerful despite all that has happened. De La Soul then come back in to deliver one last verse a repeat of their call to feel good. Mateo lets out another big laugh as he realizes that he got 2D too, 2D chants "feel good" resigning his fate and conforming to the state of delusion he sees all around him. It's over, they finally broke him.

The track was a staple for the band's live shows, often played near the end as it is the band's biggest hit. However during the band's 2017 "Humanz Tour" the song was rarely played. Maybe Damon was tired of playing this song along with the big hit from his other band, Blur, "Song 2". Regardless of how he may feel, "Feel Good Inc." is a fantastic track which changed the game for the band, not only making them a staple in the alternative music world but becoming a constant on radio and party mixes for years to come.

Dirty Harry

I Need A Gun (Dirty Harry Demo)
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry (Demon Detour, with Bootie Brown)
Dirty Harry (Demon Days Live, with Bootie Brown)
Dirty Harry (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour, with Bootie Brown)
Dirty Harry (Humanz Live, with Bootie Brown)

"This is one of the first songs that we wrote for ("Demon Days")."
- 2D

Of all the songs off of "Demon Days", "Dirty Harry" is the most blunt on it's criticism's of post-9/11 America. It's been stated that this was one of the first songs written, so it was probably the song that transitioned the album from being "Reject False Icons", to the socially conscious album we have now. Damon was always against the idea of war, and he was most active in stopping the soon to be never ending war on Iraq which then President, George W. Bush, started. He not only started a protest on the war at England's Hyde Park with Massive Attack's Robert "3D" Del Naja (a friend of Damon's and a huge influence on the sound of the group's first album), but made the cartoon band's next album a giant "fuck you" dedicated to everything George W. Bush ever did.

The song started out as a demo Damon recorded while on tour with Blur in 2003 called "I Need A Gun". Then the song was just a simplistic synthesizer riff and a repetitive drum machine loop which Damon chanted a repetitive falsetto hook over. The hook was "I need a gun to keep myself among. The poor people are burning in the sun. They ain't got a chance, they ain't got a chance. I need a gun cause all I do is dance." Now the exact lyrics sung on this track is a topic often debated. Most people think he's saying "harm" instead of "among", even the official book of sheet music for "Demon Days" which was written by Mike Smith says "harm". However, according to Damon, the lyric is "among" as Damon is a man of peace who doesn't condone unnecessary violence. The lyric itself honestly doesn't matter though, as basically Damon is saying as 2D that he feels so unsafe in today's fear mongered terrorist ridden world, that only the idea of having a gun on him will make him feel safe. The lyric became more powerful once Damon Albarn decided to have a children's choir sing the hook with him on the final track. The youth are no longer innocent, the "kids with guns" no longer see guns as just a cool object, but one they need in order to survive in the world.

Danger Mouse also expanded on the track's beat basing the song's beat around a complex drum sample of Lafayette Afro Rock Band's "Baba Hya" which is doubled by some of his own added percussion. This gives the song a funk induced old school hip hop edge similar to the track "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five. Jason Cox also added a subtle but enticing bass guitar riff to the track. Damon also expands upon the main synth riff in his demo, making it more complex and doubling it with a funky electric guitar soaked in "wah wah" effects.  The song's instrumental also builds with the children's choir adding handclaps to the instrumental dance breaks which are anchored by a new synth riff, Damon's classic 2D falsetto and a drum machine programmed by Danger Mouse. The track so far is powerful in it's message but still fun with it's retro style dance beat. However, things are about to get darker.

The string section comes in to deliver a haunting interlude as the song's happy beat soon dissolves. The sound of kids moaning in terror is heard, and soon the beat comes back only this time it's scary. The beat is now anchored by angry guitars and bass, dissonant synths, fierce drum machines and the string section's eery melody. Leading the march is old school rapper Bootie Brown from The Pharcyde. Bootie Brown is rapping from the perspective of a soldier during the war. He makes statement of hypocrisy ("I'm a peace loving decoy ready for retaliation") saying how he was trained to kill and misses his family. The war has corrupted him, now he will put you "six feet under" if you get at him, it's "impulsive" at this point. He's seen and killed so many "the cost of life" seems "cheaper" to him. At the end he almost name checks Bush while a noisy guitar blares noisy riffs. He says, "The war is over so said the speaker with the flight suit on. Maybe to him I'm just a pawn so he can advance. Remember when we used to dance? All I want to do is dance." This right here is another case of why Gorillaz are taken less seriously just because they are cartoons. If a band like Rage Against The Machine used a line like this in a song, everyone would give them praise and it would be a constant at anti-war protests. But it went overlooked by the public, it was just a "kids band" doing a song with real kids in it that name checks the band's other big song, "Clint Eastwood", what could they have to offer? The song ends with the kids chanting "dance, singing the hook one more time and then cheering and hollering. They "feel good" for now...

The song is a live constant whenever Bootie Brown is around to play it with the band. On the "Demon Days" tours the orchestration and choirs became grander, the kids couldn't help but dance to the beat and Cass Browne does his best funk style drumming. In recent performances however the song became campier in it's approach to funk, with chunky 70's style "wah wah" guitars and a retro clavinet synthesizer that is usually reserved for sultry and soulful sex jams. In some recent performances, Damon even leaves the stage and lets the band and Jamie's visuals do most of the work (which explains why it hasn't been as much of a live staple as it has been in past tours). "Dirty Harry" is as funky as it is rockin' and it has some truths packed in it to boot.

O Green World

O Green World
O Green World (Demon Days Live)
O Green World (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour)

"The words are a little reminder to keep a little greenery in your heart.."
- Noodle

"O Green World" is probably one of the darkest things Damon Albarn has ever written. The track itself is a monstrous track that delves into no wave electronics, post-punk noise guitars and horror movie type orchestration ("Psycho" in particular comes to mind). The track was likely written during the early stages of recording (the "Reject False Icons" sessions) due to Jamie's use of images and Damon's use of thematic ideas from the rejected Gorillaz movie, "Celebrity Harvest". Danger Mouse heard the track (either from a possible demo that was recorded or just by Damon playing it for him) and decided to make it into something astoundingly grandiose.

The song begins with Damon de-tuning his ukulele. Danger Mouse adds distortion to the production making the ukulele sound like a noisy feedback guitar that could have been found off of a Sonic Youth record. This leads to the first section of the song, which is centered around various strange Damon synthesizers, a drum machine played by Danger Mouse and Jason Cox's distorted bass guitar. As the song progresses, the sound of a raven (Cortez, Murdoc's pet) screaming becomes the central focus of the song. It's eery, it's dissonant, it's brilliant, but this isn't the whole song's sound.

The song changes suddenly the song is centered around two electric guitars played by Damon Albarn and Simon Tong noisily tearing through chords. A choir of vocals chant into the night as Damon starts to sing. He seems to be singing about the pollution around us on first glimpse, praying the "green world" doesn't leave him ("o green world, don't desert me now"), but he is also singing about the music industry around him. Like the first album, Gorillaz are still fighting for the end of meaningless pop music ("fighting for something new in this, when no one needs the heart of me") and wants music to go into new untraveled territory ("somewhere I've never been before"). As the lyrics progress the drum machine kicks back in, as does the bass but they are chased by a cavalcade of synth noises and hysterical screams of pain.

This part ends with a cacophonous noise from Simon Tong's guitar and soon we are back to the song's synthetic beginnings. The transition between the two give the sense of there being another duel between the real and the authentic, like there was on "Last Living Souls", the album's intro. Just then we are sucked back into another verse from Damon. This time the verse gets more explicit about the anti-pop culture themes as Damon is purely ad libbing this section. Damon went into the booth for the second verse without anything written and just sang what came to his head and it's among one of the most personal and darkest things he's ever put out. He questions existence in the world we live in now ("where are we?"), he says it's all a lie for profit ("sells to lie") and that pop stars make those with creativity unable to compete without selling their souls to the corporations ("from the darkest stars that force you"). Damon is talking about his own experiences in music here and uses 2D as a vocal puppet to soften the blow. As the verse progresses it gets uglier, saying that sex and drugs are the only thing that make him feel good anymore ("Hope sex and drugs will rust myself, it feels holy, it feels holy") in a world that makes him feel so "little". Soon he stops singing and the guitars disappear, and the choral melody becomes doubled by a synthesizer. The music stops, a bell tolls, the industry won, taking another spirit down with them.

"O Green World" was played live in the "Demon Days Live" showcases where the orchestration became grander, Cass Browne pounded on the drum beat, the guitars and bass became rawer, and the strings played a new countermelody which gave the track even more of a "Psycho" vibe. It became a regular on the "Escape To Plastic Beach Tour" where the song's environmental undertones fit right in among the themes of the band's then new album. The song has been absent from the band's recent performances (they seem to be avoiding a lot of "Demon Days" deeper cuts as of late) but hopefully it will make a return soon. "O Green World" is one of the darkest tracks the band has made and is yet another classic delivered from the "Demon Days" album.

Kids With Guns

Kids With Guns
Kids With Guns (Demon Detour)
Kids With Guns (Demon Days Live, with Neneh Cherry)
Kids With Guns (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour, with Neneh Cherry, partial footage)
Kids With Guns (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour, with Neneh Cherry, full footage)
Kids With Guns (Damon Albarn live with backing band The Heavy Seas, 2014)
Kids With Guns (Humanz Live)

"A nice boy just decided to pick up a knife and show it to his friends at lunchtime. It's a very real problem, but I'm not treating it as a problem. It's part of the brutalization of a generation that's going on at the moment."
- Damon Albarn

"Kids With Guns" is the first full dive we get into Gorillaz new sound for their new album. This album was not only going to be dark, serious and contain more of a commentary on the world around us, but it was also going to rock. Of all of the Gorillaz albums, "Demon Days" is the one that leans the most towards brutal guitar work, even the hip hop tracks on the record usually have a rocking guitar riff. The co-producer for about half of this record, Danger Mouse (one of the best producers of this millennium, if not ever), also helped to bring in a tight orchestrated sound to the chaos which made it the biggest sounding Gorillaz album yet (when Danger Mouse was done recording his tracks with Gorillaz, Damon had to go back and re-mix the tracks he produced to make them fit within the huge wall of sound Danger Mouse had set for the album).

"Kids With Guns" probably would have ended up as a weird yet brilliant trip hop track which experimented with elements of post-punk and no wave on the first album. But thank god it was on this album, because it became an art statement through punk rock aesthetic and tight production. The songs main riff is set by Jason Cox's distorted bass guitar chugging away on top of James Dring's drum work. He also doubled his drum set with a drum machine to make the groove sound even bigger. As the track went on Damon added synthesizer countermelodies, noisy sound effects, and a brilliantly subtle piano. He also utilized a chugging rhythm guitar which unusually takes a backseat to the song's all consuming bass riff. And then there's Damon's lyrics, Posdunos of De La Soul wanted to rap a verse on this track (my guess is during the second verse in which Damon just repeats part of his first verse), but thankfully that never happened, as Damon's vocal delivery is perfect for this track.

The song's lyrics sends very confusing messages. Is it condemning the fact that kids are now obsessed with violence, or is it condemning the adults for being consumed by fear and overreacting? Damon's quote above seems to head towards the latter, but in truth the song maybe from a perspective that sees the evil in all parties. Damon as 2D seems to be trying to provoke fear in the heart of the listener (or maybe he's caught up in the fear as well), trying to rile em up in classic punk rock fashion. Some of the lyrics don't even make sense for any other purpose than to strike fear (phrases like "vitamin souls" and "pacifier" appear out of nowhere, completely unrelated to the topic at hand). The point being, is it a problem that kids no longer see guns as a weapon, but as something cool? Yes, but the elder generation shouldn't vilify them, because that will only make things worse. It will turn these kids into the "monsters", the "fire", we are making them out to be and only start the violence we predicted would happen. The little kid in the quote above saw a knife, found it cool and brought it to show his friends, he wasn't going to hurt anyone. I'm sure if the kid explained himself, someone would have understood, but the very young don't get a voice when an adult's around. So one day these kids are gonna get fed up, and make their voices heard, by any means necessary.

I'm ignoring a key element of this track which is the other vocalist on this song, trip hop artist Neneh Cherry. She mainly sings back up on the studio version murmuring phrases like "push it real" and vocalizing over the song's explosive outro. However when Neneh Cherry performs live with the group she makes her presence known. During the song's loud, chaotic finish she screams and pounces around the stage, making it her own. On the studio version the outro is so loud, the band drowns her out, Damon goes crazy on the guitars with feedback and different noisy riffs, the piano rings it's highest note and Dring's drums explode drowning out Cox's bass and Damon's synths which were the track's focal points before. This is probably one of the best musical performances ever on a Gorillaz record, and it's no wonder how this became a live staple for the band. Everytime they play it, the song's instrumental becomes less tightly orchestrated and more just raw, unfiltered chaos. "Kids With Guns" is the sound of Gorillaz starting a full scale war on the world and they were going to take no prisoners.

Intro: Last Living Souls

Intro: Last Living Souls (thanks to reddit user Michelangelo_Jenkins for link to full version of song)

This wasn't supposed to happen...

Gorillaz were supposed to have a couple hits and then fade into obscurity, becoming a novelty to the mainstream, a one hit wonder, a tiny blip on the pop culture radar, a side project of a washed up artist whose prime had past him by. But then the band came back with more hits, one of them becoming Damon's most world conquering song ever. Not only that, but the band's new record would be a commentary on the world around them and would top the charts for it. It would be not only the band's highest artistic feat, but the record the world would know them for. There aren't even many "real life" artists whose best works are also their most commercially successful. An album championed by both die-hard fans and the populous masses.

Yet somehow, Damon managed to do it with "Demon Days", Gorillaz greatest achievement

Intro

Intro

Intro (Live)

"Dark Is Good Dark Is God"

- an anecdote written on the walls of Damon Albarn's 13 Studios circa 2005

"Demon Days" starts off where the first album left off, with samples of George A. Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead" consuming the instrumental. The band have gotten off from their journey on the M1 A1 to find the world in an apocalyptic type rubble. The world is consumed by fear after terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and pointless, never-ending wars such as Afghanistan and Iraq. During this pitched up voices murmur, "who put the chemicals in the food chain?" (we'll address what this lyric means in a later entry). Soon the voices consume the track making for a cacophonous noise. The world of the characters is now becoming a distorted and fucked up mirror to the chaos that the real world has become. As the noise stops, a deep voice tells us that we are now entering "the harmonic realm", and the album begins...

Last Living Souls

Last Living Souls

Last Living Souls (Demon Detour)

Last Living Souls (Demon Days Live)

Last Living Souls (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour)

Last Living Souls (Damon Albarn live with backing band The Heavy Seas, 2014)

Last Living Souls (Humanz Live)

"Last Living Souls" opens with a drum machine preset from a Cha Cha Rhythm Ace (the samba setting I believe). This drum machine sounds like it's setting up for a chilled out groove, but instead we get a dark anthem that is the final goodbye to the dub reggae sounds of the first album. The band for "Demon Days" brings re-introduces a key element to this band, co-producer/mixer/engineer Jason Cox. He plays a lot on this album including the dubby bass guitar here. It also introduces drummer, James Dring, who also is a co-producer of this album, he is a monster of a drummer who would work with Damon throughout the decade. As the track builds, Damon adds various synthesizers to provide melodic counterparts as well as an electric guitar playing chords that ring with feedback.

A lot of people don't understand the irony of the lyrics, calling the constant questioning of the band being the last living souls as pretentious. But the lead singer 2D is a character consumed by fear and anxiety, in a world where the others around him exhibit the same traits, his are only increased. 2D and his anxiety are now one and the same, making him less articulate. So Damon is channeling 2D throughout this record, speaking in the lingo only someone with a messed up mind like his could muster in dark times like these.

The song comes to a stop in the middle of the song, revealing an orchestral sound new to the Gorillaz catalog. The London Community Gospel Choir reveal themselves as the in-house choir for this album as they chant "get up" as an echo to Damon while the track's dub groove slowly dissolves. Soon it's just Damon singing with a piano and an acoustic guitar played by Simon Tong, guitarist of Britpop band The Verve and a musician who will continue to make appearances on this album. Damon's lyrics talk about all he's done wrong ("cos all I've sung, I got it down wrong"), he's wondering if God will still accept him when his time has come. Only Damon can take a track from a latter day Specials type groove into a Paul McCartney esque prayer on piano and make it sound as brilliant as it does here. Soon, another addition comes in, this being Gorillaz in-house string section, Demon Strings. The dub sounds of the beginning merges with the more orchestral and rock oriented sounds that this album will deliver. Damon realizes he's all alone, his prayers did'n't work, we are doomed. He then screams the song's title question as a duel between a drum machine and the dub groove of Cox and Dring play us off, it's a battle between the authentic and the mass produced, a battle Damon will continue to fight throughout his whole career.

The song became gradually more unhinged and dubby as the band continued to play it live. By 2017, the drum machine was no longer the song's center focus and the drum and bass's dub groove plays us off as Damon's screams echo throughout the arena. Only a band like Gorillaz can turn a track like this into a live constant that fans love to sing along to. For some bands, a track like "Last Living Souls" would be their greatest achievement, their grand finale. But for Gorillaz, it is only the beginning of their quest.