Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz

Damon Albarn is a musical chameleon. He got his start with Blur in the early 90s (whose 8th album The Magic Whip was on the Top 31 at #21 in 2015). He’s also appeared on the Top 31 with The Good, The Bad and the Queen (#23 in 2018). And what started as a side project in 2005, Gorillaz has lately become Albarn’s main gig. The band’s seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez appears here at #13 for 2020.

I’d lost interest in Gorillaz, despite my ongoing love for Albarn’s music. I haven’t loved anything he’s done with Gorillaz since their 2005 Danger Mouse-produced sophomore album Demon Days, and consequently the four albums prior to Song Machine that were released between 2010 and 2018 did not make the Top 31 cut. I’m glad that 2020 saw the release of another great Gorillaz album.

For those of you living under a rock, Gorillaz is a “virtual” band, with four fictional animated characters illustrated by Tank Girl-creator Jamie Hewlett. Musically, the band’s songs are principally created by Albarn, with a large collection of support characters and guest stars coming in to flesh things out. Since 2016, the band’s song creation duties have been shared with a third member of the band, Remi Kabaka Jr., who mans the lead percussion and produces the songs. Together they create a wide variety of digitally-created music with Albarn taking the lead on vocals, often singing with guest starts.

Song Machine started at the beginning of 2020 as a web-only music video series, a collection of singles released monthly with guest stars appearing on each song. There was no intention of releasing the songs as a full album. But, much like all the other plans launched in the first couple months of 2020, things changed. And we’re all the better for it.

The guest stars on Song Machine, Season One are what propelled this album into a prominent spot of my 2020 playlist. Robert Smith, Beck, St. Vincent, Elton John, and Peter Hook (among many many others) appear on the album. Not only do they lend their voices to these songs, but the songs they appear on shift tonally to the range that these voices are known for. So the album often sounds less like a Gorillaz album, and more like a movie soundtrack filled with great pop songs.

The album is very easy to love. Even if you’ve not been a fan in the past, I recommend checking it out. You just may surprise yourself.

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1. Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee
2. Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
3. Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers
4. folklore + evermore by Taylor Swift
5. Untitled (Black Is) + Untitled (Rise) by Sault
6. RTJ4 by Run The Jewels
7. Shore by Fleet Foxes
8. Serpentine Prison by Matt Berninger
9. The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens
10. Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest
11. Dreamland by Glass Animals
12. A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.
13. Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz
14. Mordechai + Texas Sun EP by Khruangbin
15. Introduction, Presence by Nation of Language
16. Free Love by Sylvan Esso
17. Miss Anthropocene by Grimes
18. 3.15.20 by Childish Gambino
19. Women In Music Pt. III by HAIM
20. The Third Mind by The Third Mind
21. Superstar by Caroline Rose
22. Impossible Weight by Deep Sea Diver
23. We Will Always Love You by The Avalanches
24. Ultra Mono by IDLES
25. Visions of Bodies Being Burned by clipping.
26. Thin Mind by Wolf Parade
27. The Loves of Your Life by Hamilton Leithauser
28. Palo Alto (Live) by Thelonious Monk
29. color theory by Soccer Mommy
30. Fall to Pieces by Tricky
31. Quarantine Casanova by Chromeo

Subscribe to the 2020 Bacon Top 31 playlist: Apple Music / Spotify
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Pure Comedy by Father John Misty

I’ve written quite a bit about Josh Tillman’s alter ego Father John Misty a few times over the years (his debut album, Fear Fun, was #14 in 2012 and his second album I Love You, Honeybear was #6 in 2015). But it’s only on recent runs through his fantastic third album Pure Comedy that I’ve come to this opinion: Father John Misty is the millennial Elton John.

Bear with me here. Think about it: Tillman’s stage presence is wild and ironically humorous, much like Elton John but without the costumes. Tillman’s voice is quite similar to John’s, and they both use them to great effect. The music of Pure Comedy is very orchestral, similar to much of John’s work from the 80s and 90s. Are you seeing it yet?

Where Tillman differs from John is his use of thick sarcasm to paint a bleak picture of humanity. This album is mostly quiet and good for having on in the background until you start paying attention to the words. Then you realize Tillman’s world is depressing and lonely. I’m not put off by sad, depressing music — I did come of age in the 90s, after all — so this album is right up my alley.

Tillman has always had a good grasp of the visual, but he’s taken it to new heights with this album. His website takes Ed Steed’s fabulous illustrations from the album cover and animates them. The video shown above, “Total Entertainment Forever,” features Macaulay Culkin dressed up like Kurt Cobain in a demented “virtual” world. And there are a number of other videos from the album:

“Pure Comedy”
“Leaving LA”
“Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution”

There’s even a 25-minute short film called “Pure Comedy” directed by Tillman and Grant James that dismantles the Father John Misty songwriting process into a series of in-studio and LA-based imagery, a lot of which shows LA covered in raging fire — perhaps a little too prescient given the most recent spate of forest fires in the area. You can read a lot more about this album and Tillman’s process in the feature from the NY Times back when the album came out.

The song “Leaving LA” nearly killed the entire album for me. The song is over 13 minutes long, and the lilting way Tillman sings throughout the entirety of the song somehow expanded in my mind to fill the entire album, thinking he was stuck in a groove that had infected all 74 of its musical minutes. I thankfully got past it, and so can you. Give this album a listen if you haven’t already. And listen to its sad, broken stories. They paint a bleak picture that perfectly captures what 2017 felt like politically.

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16. Shake the Shudder by !!!
17. La La Land (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by La La Land
18. The Underside of Power by Algiers
19. What Now by Sylvan Esso
20. 50 Song Memoir by The Magnetic Fields
21. Plunge by Fever Ray
22. DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar
23. Capacity by Big Thief
24. The Tourist by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
25. CCFX EP by CCFX
26. Woodstock by Portugal. The Man
27. MASSEDUCTION by St. Vincent
28. On the Spot by Hot 8 Brass Band
29. A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs
30. Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, & James McAlister
31. A Moment Apart by Odesza

Subscribe to the 2017 Top 31 Apple Music playlist
2009-2016 Top 31s

#13 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Gorillaz

#15 on the 2017 Bacon Top 31