Released on February 27, this new album, well received by critics, explores memory and grief through a work steeped in absence. But what does this “mountain” at the heart of the project really signify?
Twenty-five years after their debut, Gorillaz, the virtual group imagined by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, delivers The Mountain, their ninth album in a discography built on style collisions and unexpected encounters. Designed as a more cohesive record than some of its predecessors, it also marks a turning point: new independent label, new imagery, and a very enthusiastic critical reception.
A collective laboratory since its creation, Gorillaz pushes this logic further by bringing together living and deceased artists. Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, Mark E. Smith, Tony Allen, or Dave Jolicoeur appear from recorded archives from past collaborations. “A way to extend life,” according to Le Monde, transforming the album into a dialogue between different eras of music and the group’s own history.
Several specialized press critics directly link this album to the deaths of Albarn and Hewlett’s fathers. France Culture speaks of an “album of mourning, of reflection, with the idea that death may only be a passage.” “If we wanted to address [this subject] (…) I needed disappeared individuals to help me talk about it,” Albarn explains in the official press release that accompanied the album’s release.
The project partly stems from a trip to India, where Albarn went to scatter his father’s ashes. Traditional instruments, polyglot chants, and spiritual textures permeate the album. “In the West, death is final. Whereas in India, sadness comes from knowing that we won’t see this family member again in this form, but we celebrate the idea that they will start again,” explains Jamie Hewlett.
Since the album’s announcement, titles have been imaginative in welcoming Gorillaz “to the top.” A wordplay too tempting not to be picked up – and, quite frankly, not entirely unjustified as The Mountain appears as one of the group’s most coherent albums.
But the mountain is more than just a singular trophy. Rather than a conquest, it resembles a stop after the climb, a place of transition. A ridgeline between two worlds, that of the living and that of the absent. From this height, Gorillaz looks back without getting stuck, transforming mourning into a suspended moment where one accepts what disappears in order to continue moving forward.
