Pitchfork

Most musicians have their own toy boxes, the places they hide away all the obsessions and experiments that don't fit comfortably under the umbrella of their main projects. Compared to other artists', Damon Albarn's playroom chest must be filled to bursting: the cultural drawer cluttered with horror films, anime, and rock'n'roll stereotypes; the musical drawer crammed full of dub, hip-hop, dancehall, and afropop. In fact, Albarn seems to have so many creative distractions tempting his muse, he can't even keep them from occasionally invading the conservative environs of his day job-- each Blur album manages to squeeze in at least one ill-fitting endeavor like Think Tank's "Crazy Beat".

Fortunately, Gorillaz provides Albarn an outlet to vent his taste for sci-fi kitsch, and satiate his urge to break free from rock with guitars-- and it's a surprisingly successful outlet, at that. (Did anyone really expect an edgy street-cred Banana Splits to be worth discussing four years into its discography?) Rather than falling flat, Gorillaz have strangely become a therapeutic and clever way for Albarn to subvert the usual egolympics associated with a solo project. Coyly hiding behind Jamie Hewlett's thick-inked pop caricatures and a phalanx of guest stars, Gorillaz allows Albarn to practice self-indulgence under heavy personality camouflage-- though never so heavy that there's any question as to who's really pulling the strings.

Like the Gorillaz's self-titled debut, Demon Days goes the way of most auteur projects, its oversize idea load making for a trip equal parts peak and valley. But also like the debut, Demon Days is better than it has any right to be, featuring singles stronger than anything released under the Blur banner since, you know, that "Woo-hoo" song. For a project that could easily have been little more than Damon Albarn Remakes "Ghost Town" 15 Times (With More Rapping & Cartoons), this is a follow-up that proves Gorillaz, weirdly, has legs-- not that the four-year break hurt any.

In order to keep things fresh, however, Albarn made a few exchanges at the hip-hop Wal-Mart, trading in his sputtering old Dan the Automator model for Danger "as seen on CNN!" Mouse, and swapping out Del tha Funkee Homosapien for MF Doom and... Dennis Hopper. These new collaborators add more to the proceedings than just increasing the comic-dork factor by about 10, particularly Danger Mouse, whose colorfully dense production helps buoy the occasionally slight genre sketches scripted by Albarn and his fleet of retro keyboards.

For most of the album, Danger Mouse & Albarn make like they're Dario Argento & Goblin, to the point that this Fangoria neophyte can't tell the difference between the sampled zombie-flick scores and the facsimile ones (I'm pretty sure "Last Living Souls" is the former). Obviously, this agenda cues me to resort to adjectives like "foreboding," "ominous," and "sinister," but Albarn can't help making his haunted house a discotheque. As with the standouts from the debut album, the best tracks here strike a unique balance between slacker detachment and dance-floor bounce: "Feel Good Inc." swerves through an anxious bassline to a choice De La Soul drive-by, while "DARE" defibrillates Shaun Ryder to shout along while Albarn channels Prince's synths and falsettos.

Of course, there are a few blown-up test tubes amid the successful experiments, too: undercooked genre dalliances (the robo-punk "White Light"), a few dull, unfortunately frontloaded Xanax lopes ("Kids With Guns", "O Green World"), and the truly bizarre (Hopper's once-is-enough spoken word on "Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head"). Albarn also occasionally gets too distracted trying on the outfits of other bands, like on Beach Boys replicant "Don't Get Lost in Heaven", and fires his one radio dud with his second shrine to Clint Eastwood, a collaboration with Booty Brown and a children's choir called "Dirty Harry".

On the album-closing title track, the appearance of a choir genuinely works, accomplishing the amazing task of being the second time (after "Tender") that Albarn has gotten away with effectively employing that ultimate lazy rock add-on. In fact, if the Gorillaz concept achieves anything beyond keeping Hewlett employed and producing some snazzy videos and websites, it's proving that Albarn can successfully wield the sonic toys he's mostly kept partitioned apart from his flesh band. Though the results of his exuberant mixing and matching are uneven at times, Albarn's obsessions fit together just often enough to again make Gorillaz more than mere Adult Swim novelty.