Gorillaz have been making music for 25 years now. That’s 13 years longer than Damon Albarn’s “other” band Blur’s most active period from 1991’s debut Leisure to 2003’s breakup album Think Tank.
Sure, Blur have came and went a few times, but Gorillaz have never really went away for too long, as their genesis coincided with Albarn’s curiosity and generosity in collaborating in his music making.
While Albarn made albums with musicians in Mali, recorded with Western/African musicians as Africa Express, with supergroup The Good, the Bad & the Queen and a solo record Everyday Robots to name a few, it was Gorillaz, the high-concept animated band that felt like it have had the most short-lived shelf life of the lot. Yet, here we are 25 years after the self-titled album and no-one could have foreseen what a blast a live Gorillaz show is all this time later.
The Gorillaz live show is a juggernaut – a feat of timing, scheduling, musicianship and Jamie Hewlitt’s visual motion art – writ large on three screens across the Gorillaz two-hour 23-song set list in the 3Arena in Dublin tonight.
12 musicians form the core backbone of tonight’s show – centred on latest, and ninth album The Mountain – a record inspired by Jamie and Damon’s experiences of loss – seemingly tied together in death as they are in life – the longtime friends and band collaborators were born 10 days apart and the death of two of their parents – also 10 days apart – imbued their experiences following that grief with a profound experiences involving high altitude escapades in India that lead to the creation of this latest work.
Tonight’s setlist features 12 songs from the album, over half the set, with its posthumous appearances from previous collaborators Dennis Hopper, Mark E Smith, Bobby Womack – the latter on screen from 2010’s career highlight Plastic Beach ‘Stylo’. On stage, the Indian theme of the album is augmented by classical flautist Ajay Prasanna and an additional percussionist.
The Gorillaz live show in 2026 nails the balance of presenting the “virtual band” of 2-D, Noodle, Murdoc and Russell with a suite of other rich animations via three screens along with this robust and layered, platformed live show.
More impressive though, is how Gorillaz has resonated across the generational divides over the years – I can’t remember being at a gig where the music was so divided across ages – from young boys and girls with their mams and dads at their first concert, to teenagers decked in Gorillaz tees singing every word into the camera to the people like me, and older of course, who are absolutely buzzed to see rap legends Mos Def/Yasiin Bey, The Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown, De La Soul’s Posdnuos and screen-based Roots’ Black Thought rub shoulders with Joe Talbot of IDLES, Argentinian rapper Trueno (who is on support) and the unconventional bluesy alt-folk singer Kara Jackson, who not only made one of my albums of 2023 with Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? (also about grief by the way) is also on The Mountain‘s single best song – the whistle earworm song, also about grief – ‘Orange County’.
That generational gap is immediately apparent when the kids scream VERY LOUDLY to the first appearance of the Gorillaz’ cartoon band members in their Jungle Book-esque animated odyssey, only Damon himself gets as loud a cheer.
If there is reduced time for Gorillaz best two albums which get three tracks each – 2005’s Demon Days with ‘El Mañana’, ‘Dirty Harry’, ‘Feel Good Inc’, with 2010’s Plastic Beach’s Rhinestone Eyes’, ‘On Melancholy Hill’ and ‘Stylo’.
The self-titled 2001 debut gets a glut of the rest along with some of the night’s best reactions and singalongs to ‘Clint Eastwood’, ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’ and ’19-2000′.
What a massive project Albarn has borne across this long distance of time and space since it first arrived. Whether deliberate or not, Gorillaz rose to prominence in the playlist era – and the cross-generational audience today readily welcome mixing classic rappers, punk singers, folk truthers, Syrian wedding singers (hi Omar Souleyman), and Indian legends together in one big mixtape soup.
Tonight, Gorillaz in Dublin was a cosmic peak. Long live Gorillaz.
Gorillaz – Dublin – April 1st Setlist
- The Mountain
- The Happy Dictator
- Tranz
- Tomorrow Comes Today
- 19-2000
- Rhinestone Eyes
- The God of Lying (with Joe Talbot)
- The Moon Cave
- El Mañana
- On Melancholy Hill
- The Empty Dream Machine
- Delirium
- Andromeda
- Stylo (with Yasiin Bey)
- Damascus (with Yasiin Bey)
- Dirty Harry (with Bootie Brown)
- The Shadowy Light
- The Sad God
- Encore
- The Hardest Thing
- Orange County (with Kara Jackson)
- The Manifesto (with Trueno)
- Feel Good Inc. (with Posdnuos)
- Clint Eastwood
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
