Hughesta’s Top 5 most underrated Gorillaz songs

Howdy. I’m not here right now to tell you what I think are the best Gorillaz songs. I’m here now to tell you what Gorillaz songs you don’t like enough. Gorillaz have a lot of songs, and they’re pretty much all real good, so here are my picks for the five songs you probably don’t like as much as you should.

Faust

Let’s talk about Faust. One of the most creeping, melodic, droning Gorillaz songs there is. It focuses its assault on the left channel, much like Starshine from the same sessions. A crushed bass and drum machine form the backbone of the track, while some light synths and keyboards flesh out the sound. This same section loops twice, with some harsher synths whirling the second time through. A quieter synth undercuts the keys during the final loop, and then Miho Hatori comes in with some gorgeous, ethereal vocals, while Damon chimes in with an english translation and brings the song (and the listener) to completion. Some really fun synths at the end of this track, and the unmastered version actually lets you hear them much more clearly.

There isn’t much to say about this one and I don’t know that it’s even particularly disliked – making it very different from the rest of the songs I’ll be telling you about today – but a lot of people seem to pass it by. I’ve seen more people talk about Dub Dumb! This gorgeous, ivy-like track is the highlight of G-Sides and shouldn’t be overlooked by anybody who is serious about getting into the band’s discography.

Submission (ft. Kelela & Danny Brown)

Don’t try to hide away. I know you’ve been wrong, but I’m keeping calm. If you hate Submission, let me try to fix that. Submission isn’t necessarily widely hated so much as it is widely divisive. As one of several tracks on Humanz where Damon is kept restrained and in the background, it’s no surprise that a lot of people overlook this track. On first glance it might not sound particularly Gorillaz-y, and you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for some EDM/pop track. But there’s a lot going on under the surface of Submission that makes it incredible interesting and exciting.

There are glitches in the synths, there are loops in the vocals, cracks in the facade. Damon’s calling out to you from behind waves of Graham Coxon’s guitars, but he’s out of reach, warped into submission (ayyy) by wonky, vaguely unsettling power of the track. Kelela delivers a great performance on this track, but the song really kicks off once she fades away. Graham comes in harsher than ever, giving us his best and most disgusting guitar solo since Blur’s 13, and Danny Brown jumps in with an all-time best Gorillaz rap verse, really selling the hopelessness and despair felt by so many at the state of the world today.

♪ from “Submission”

he raps over collapsing synths and broken guitars. By the time Kelela comes back in for the final hook, those distorted synths completely overtake the track, pummeling you with an awesome wave of sound and energy, all while the choir in the background provides you a heavenly respite from the hellish onslaught of the music. Just a ripper of a track. A+.

Colombians

I don’t think Colombians is an outstanding track. Not by a long shot. This Super Deluxe exclusive tune is one of the most abrasive, out-there, and wild Gorillaz cuts ever released. But while it may not be spectacular, this track is particularly reviled by many fans, to the point of downright absurdity. It definitely deserves a fairer shake, and I suppose this article is the closest I’ll get to convincing anybody to give it one. This song is weird.

It sounds like Damon Albarn was carrying a jigsaw puzzle of Aphex Twin stems and then fell down some stairs. It sounds like Damon dropped his iPad while programming a robot bird voice and then just left the chart the way it turned out. But it only sounds like that at first. If you lend the song an ear, you’ll find that it’s actually very deliberate. It reminds me a lot of Double Bass in a way – a repetitive instrumental based around finding new ways to keep the same few sounds interesting throughout its duration. The higher pitched ‘balloon’ synths, as they’ve come to be known, play out some interesting riffs and melodies as the song progressing, and the drum/bass beat the song is comprised around is constantly changing. What you hear at the end of the track is very different from what you hear at the start, but it progresses there very naturally.

There’s even a fun little bit towards the end where the drums basically get annoyed at their rhythm and demand to be switched up. It’s an interesting track, and while I wouldn’t put it on a playlist or anything it’s certainly better than some other Gorillaz experiments like Samba at 13.

Halfway To The Halfway House (ft. Peven Everett)

This is one of my all time favorite Gorillaz songs, and perhaps one of the most powerful things Damon has ever recorded. While it’s the only song on Humanz’ Deluxe Edition that doesn’t have Damon on it at all, it makes up for his absence by filling the open spaces jam-packed with the Humanz Choir. Peven delivers one of the best performances of his life, singing about rapturous ecstacy and the fear and beauty of death, while the music creates an incredibly uneasy and uncertain landscape. It’s almost what I imagine death would sound like. The song only gets more desperate as it goes along, with the once calm and collected choir screaming and shrieking about mercy and their ‘Cherryade fountain,’ which Peven has said is a “sacred place that everybody wants to go.”

The song is at once horrific and rapturous, and just listening to it is a very spiritual and powerful experience unlike any other Gorillaz song, perhaps excepting Demon Days.

I can’t say enough good things about this track, I really could go on all day. I love Peven screaming behind the choir when they overtake him, I love his lyrics, I love the mixing of the choir, completely surrounding you with their fervor. I love the “Play piano, I’ll sing mercy” section. I love the bridge. I love the desperation the choir has when they sing “I’ve gotta get out!” I love the homage to Punk during the intro. I love the sound of a button being pressed during the early portions of the song, and the terrifying synth squelch towards the end of the first verse. I love the title’s implication that death, while a release from life, is just another form of imprisonment. I love Halfway to the Halfway House, and so should you.

The Speak-It Mountains

The Fall is a misunderstood album. For a lot of people, it’s just ‘the iPad album,’ or the album Damon slapped together to get out of his contract with EMI, and to a certain extent those are both true. It’s more than that though, because due to the reclusive nature of its recordings, and the time period and locations of its creation, it’s actually one of Damon’s most personal albums. It’s a memento of a terrible tour, a tour where he fought and split up with the person who had been his best friend for decades, a tour where some poor financial decisions led to the premature conclusion of something Damon had been planning for many years.

The Fall is not a look into America during the Plastic Beach Tour, it is a look into Damon’s mind while these events played out. Of all the songs on the record, it’s actually the instrumental drone of The Speak-it Mountains that is perhaps the most revealing of Damon’s mental state at the time. The Speak-It Mountains was recorded towards the end of the tour, on October 24th in the mountains of Denver. The song seems to be about High Altitude Sickness, a nasty little effect of traversing those mountains that leads to illness, mental instability, and even death as a result of the thin air. That progression can be heard throughout the song. As more time is spent in the mountains (as told by the upward count in the vocal), the sounds become more shocking and unsettling, and everything starts to fall apart. Once the count reaches ‘Seven,’ the music abruptly stops and we hear a bloodcurdling scream before Aspen Forest fades in to relax us. I think this song is about Damon, cooped up on a bus traveling through Denver, losing his mind as his relationships crumble and his band goes broke. This was perhaps the low point of the tour for him, and he seems very defeated and lost. The song previous to this on The Fall is Amarillo, which ends with Damon begging for human affection. After that, Damon doesn’t speak for a full three songs, only making an appearance to hum sporadically on Aspen Forest.

He was at his wits end. I do think the song has another meaning, however. It may be about the Mount Everest Disaster of 1996, where eight people were caught in a blizzard while climbing Mount Everest and lost their lives due to the combination of High Altitude Sickness and horrific conditions. The scream after the spoken “Seven,” more than just representing Damon’s unrest at the time, could be the scream of the eighth and final individual to perish in the disaster, as they realize they’re the only one left and there is no hope for them. This is a good song.

Here are some other underrated Gorillaz songs that I didn’t write about, but you should give another chance to if you aren’t fond of them right now:

• HillBilly Man
• Sex Murder Party
• Hallelujah Money
• The Swagga
• Man Research (Clapper)
• Charger (Pauline Black Alt)