The Fall by Gorillaz falls through

People can’t criticize the UK band Gorillaz of straying from its true musical roots with itsnew album The Fall , released on April 19. The album is nowhere near mainstream music and don’t expect to hear any songs from the album on the radio. The album was made almost entirely on the iPad of Gorillaz founder Damon Albarn while the band was on their U.S. tour in the fall.

Their previous album, Plastic Beach, was a big hit and the release of The Fall has come not even a full year after. You can’t call the band lazy, that’s for sure. The album is what you expect from a full-length LP that was made almost completely on an iPad with definite speed during a tour. It’s all right, but nowhere near as good as it could have been had it been made with a good amount of time and a full studio.

The album sounds like a work in progress. The beats are choppy and seem like a random mixture of undistinguished sounds. The lyrics are odd and incoherent and they are mixed into the songs in a way that makes no sense, the songs have no meaning. The songs on the album never stay in one place. “Phoner to Arizona” is just a repeated odd sounding drum while another song sings over and over again about revolving doors in an eerie moan. One song is literally 41 seconds of yodeling. “The Joplin Spider” gives chills with its opening. Several songs are bursts of radio or speeches and preaching full of static. Other songs feature running water or alien-like sounds, almost all are slow starting. The only songs that are tolerable on the album are “Detroit” and “Bobby in Phoenix.” These were the only two songs I listened to all the way through without once wincing or flinching.

I wouldn’t have expected the album to do well, but it has been number two in iTunes of albums in the Alternative genre. The songs are hard on the ears. If you aren’t heavily interested in listening to mostly instrumentals and synthetic noises with a random mix of odd lyrics, I would not recommend The Fall to you.