Each lead is set in a different location, as many of the titles imply and the album notes make explicit. The listener follows the circle from the East to the West Coast, tracing a course through the center of the state from Montreal to Seattle. The iPad production and the ephemeral recording circumstances cause the album something of a song-a-day project, and Gorillaz encourage that impression by including radio news clips and lyrics about various locales. "Oh Texas, can you see me? / Speed up on the dawn / To the pinks and vapours of Houston / In the sun," sings Albarn on "The Parish of Space Dust", which was recorded, obviously, in Houston. If the concept sounds a bit novel, Gorillaz have acknowledged as much-The Strike was originally released to fan club members last Christmas, and it`s streaming free at the band`s website.
The music, composed largely of slow-paced hip hop beats with or without vocals, has the fluid impressionism you might require from a travelogue. Tracks like "Phoner to Arizona", "Shy-Town" and "Amarillo" plod forward with the soothing aimlessness of a long bus ride. Some are simple sketches, like the delightful "Aspen Forest", and all have the notion of playful, impulsive work-shopping. It`s much looser than Plastic Beach, but The Fall shares the latter`s sense of flat immediacy. The driving forces behind the music are the luxurious textures and deceptively simple rhythms, not the lackadaisical vocals or barely intelligible lyrics. In other words, The Light is a more fleeting and less consistent interpretation of what Gorillaz has done all along, subordinating the substance of the medicine to the voice and sense of its creation.
In kind as good as content, The Return is more like a pet project than a full-fledged release. Gorillaz is not the low lot to get a meandering travelogue record, and their contribution can hardly stand up to giants of the genre like the KLF`s Chill Out. Even so, there are quiet enough surprises and enough subtleties to create The Dusk an absorbing listen. At the very least, it`s a musical day-in-the-life of one of the strangest, most inventive bands in music, and you can`t argue with that. You can always trust Albarn to get his eye on the larger picture, though, and as a statement, The Light is often more than a passing fancy. It may have been conceived and executed on the intake of the moment, but it`s also testimony to the growing capabilities of portable devices like the iPad and the potentially renewed appeal of a concept album in an industry unmanned by technological progress. Once again, Albarn may be onto something.
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