Everything Will Disappear

Gorillaz featuring Tame Impala and Bootie Brown “New Gold”

Damon Albarn has used Gorillaz as a vehicle for exploring a lot of musical ideas through the past two decades but there’s one trick he’s figured out that no one has come close to rivaling – electro-funk groove + energetic rap + plaintive indie vocal. This is the basic formula for a lot of the most successful and widely beloved Gorillaz songs – “Feel Good Inc,” “Superfast Jellyfish,” “Stylo,” “Ascension” – and it’s the setup for “New Gold,” their best song in a little while. It’s a delicious little ice cream sundae of a song, a perfect balance of those three core elements with a little bit of Albarn’s vocals tossed in like rainbow sprinkles. Tame Impala’s presence is the most overwhelming ingredient as anything with Kevin Parker’s voice ultimately sounds like anything else with his voice, but there’s just enough contrast between him and Bootie Brown’s verses to keep it squarely in the aesthetic realm of Gorillaz. And they’re all certainly on message with the lyrics, sketching out a vision of post-apocalyptic society not far off from most anything on 2010’s Plastic Beach.

Buy it from Amazon.