It was Halloween on Plastic Beach on Saturday night at Oracle Arena, as Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s high concept musical variety hour, Gorillaz, took to the stage in all of its virtual Demon Day glory.
Guest stars and collaborators were in abundance — nearly 40 different musicians made appearances over the course of the evening, ranging from full horn and string sections to De La Soul’s rambunctious lyricism and Bobby Womack’s smooth soulfulness. Mick Jones and Paul Simonon stalked the stage as the genre-bending legacy of the Clash manifested beneath Hewlett’s animated offspring, the musically-inclined primate half-cousins of Tank Girl.
The surreal brilliance of all of this was evident as Albarn, in un-dead makeup, asked – “Are we the last…living souls?” The band answered with a 20-plus song audio avalanche from the Gorillaz arsenal: “Stylo,” “DARE,” “White Flag,” “19/2000,” and a show-stopping rendition of “Dirty Harry.”
Feel Good Inc.? Indeed.