Is garbagepunk a word? Because it should be.

Gorillaz' Demon Days opens with a very noir oboe, punctuated by sirens, timpani, and an incomprehensible loop of some garbled rap lyric. The image of a dimly lit alley, graffiti scrawled on the brick walls, trash cans overflowing, is inescapable. And as a good intro should, it sets the tone for the underworld, counterculture feel of the album. Listening to the album is a lot like scrambling through an enormous junkyard. To be clear, that's a good thing. The album flows well, but that doesn't mean it's predictable. Every track is not quite what you expected, and though some are difficult to categorize as good songs on their own ("November Has Come", "All Alone", "White Light"), nothing is dead weight. If you're going to look at a junkyard with an eye for the aesthetic, you're going to have to use a very different metric than that you would use for a garden: everything here is interesting. Here the city's refuse has assumed the shape of a cathedral, the altar an overturned turntable ("O Green World") - there the contours of a Miami highrise ("Kids With Guns"). "Dirty Harry", one of the strongest songs on the album, is a good example of how this garbage approach to music works: it starts with a catchy synthesizer riff and a driving cowbell. The bass enters, a sort of off-beat jaunty staccato, and is joined by the drums and a children's choir:

I need a gun to keep myself from harm

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

Cause all I do is dance.

The song then goes into a brief strings interlude before breaking it down into an anti-war rap (a pretty good one) and then resumes with the choir and bass. It then segues into the crazed laughter of "Feel Good, Inc." - and let me just say, if this song does not make you dance inside, you have no soul. Perhaps the catchiest, darkest bass groove ever devised, under a quiet guitar arpeggiation and the two-ton weight of a junkie's addiction:

You got a new horizon it's ephemeral style

A melancholy town where we never smile

And all I wanna hear is the message beep

My dreams they gotta kiss because I don't get sleep, no

Then it opens up into an ethereal acoustic guitar for the chorus before reverting to a surprisingly unsettling rap, given that it uses the lines, "It's my chocolate attack" and "Care bear bumping in the heart of this here". It goes ABABA, ending, as it began, with insane laughter. You have the drugged-out hazy dance groove of "DARE", the mostly-spoken folktale "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head" - a rather heavy-handed but well done anti-imperialist polemic - and the gospel choir of "Demon Days" to finish off an always-interesting, often-excellent album. I'll get in Plastic Beach at a later date.