The Now Now

Gorillaz - The Now Now
Critic Score
Based on 39 reviews
2018 Ratings: #629 / 890
User Score
2018 Rank: #576
Liked by 282 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

85
Northern Transmissions
Using simple melodies with more sophisticated sounds, this record is more personal while leaving a bit of the single-power of previous Gorillaz records behind.
82
Sputnikmusic

At 20 minutes shorter than your average Gorillaz project The Now Now feels shockingly complete.

80
The Guardian

The Now Now is capable of beguiling despite the babble – a Gorillaz album that, for once, acts not as loudspeaker for the cacophony of modern life, but a salve instead.

80
Rolling Stone

While The Now Now works as a piece, it does lack the sparks that come from the usual Gorillaz mess of ideas and personalities.

80
Exclaim!

All in all, The Now Now feels fresh and present. Gorillaz have performed a type of sonic reset by stripping back their cast of collaborators, yet it exemplifies the strength of the songwriting at the group's core.

80
The Skinny

Gorillaz's latest album The Now Now celebrates the interpenetration of alternate realities and our mundane. It’s a reminder that realities, real or otherwise, are shared.

80
The Line of Best Fit

The lack of genre hopping (sticking mostly to electronic and pop) and guest stars, and the move away from tackling the issues of the day in favour of something more personal, makes The Now Now their most straightforward record, but it's no less interesting for that.

80
DIY

‘The Now Now’ is a more spaced-out affair, stripped of its star-studded collaborations and bathed in the apparent apathy of the modern age.

80
Spill Magazine
With not much in the way of musical ambition, this album was created for pure entertainment and with its entertainment factor throughout, there’s nothing wrong with that.
80
NME

Where ‘Humanz’ leaned too heavily on swampy, generic hip-hop beats, ‘The Now Now’ prides itself on making 11 pop tracks that zip with energy, passion and an abundance of ideas.

80
The Arts Desk
Damon Albarn moves front and centre in a surprisingly upbeat record.
80
Q Magazine

It's that juxtaposition between sunshiny pop and yearning lyrics that defines much of The Now Now ... This latest chapter in the Gorillaz story sounds like a deeply confessional one.

78
Paste

In contrast to the lightness of the music—a sleek funk that feels like what songwriters and tech geeks from the ‘80s imagined the future would sound like—the lyrics are paranoid and despairing, sorrowful and confused.

75
A.V. Club

Overall, The Now Now would work better if it fully embraced its melancholy.

70
Spectrum Culture

At the end of the day, The Now Now isn’t as exciting as the band’s albums usually are, but it’s the best kind of album Gorillaz could give us: an antidote to the landscapes being sung about.

70
The Sydney Morning Herald
It's to Albarn's​ credit that, while understated, these inventive, rather lovely songs are far from filler.
70
Crack Magazine

The Now Now is irresistibly chilled and the perfect palate cleanser a year on from Humanz‘s end-of-days disarray.

70
Uncut
It feels like Albarn in transit, both physically and mentally.
70
XS Noize
The combination of animation and fiction have allowed Gorillaz over the past two decades to evolve in a unique way few other bands wouldn’t have been able to. There is still demand for more seasons to be made in the animated soap opera known to the world as Gorillaz.
70
Clash

It’s quite easy to lose sight of the fact that ‘The Now Now’ was rushed out, recorded in February in time for festival season, as it sounds typically expansive and self-assured.

70
musicOMH

The album flows well, with a funky instrumental interlude picking up the pace nicely around the middle and its relatively short run time making it a light and breezy experience.

70
PopMatters

If you didn't like last year's Humanz for its glut of guests and lack of emphasis on Albarn's sandy, pinched warble, this is as close to a one-on-one experience with the erstwhile Blur singer as you're ever going to get.

70
AllMusic

What was once a rowdy, colorful party is now a soundtrack for bittersweet solitude.

68
Pitchfork

The allure of isolation defines Damon Albarn’s latest project. With only a few guests on the album, he writes simple, mostly upbeat songs with words of exhaustion.

65
Under the Radar

Even if The Now Now comes across as a solo effort from Albarn, it is still a far improvement on the bloated and playlist-y nature of Humanz which masked everything that is interesting about Gorillaz in its Jumbotron collaborators. Albarn is at his most interesting when he is in the spotlight.

60
Mojo
This is a record that manages to feel both trapped and rootless.
60
The Irish Times

On their sixth album, The Now Now, they cut back on the frivolities, attuning their colourful fiction to a grim reality.

60
Drowned in Sound

It may be overly critical to complain that The Now Now is merely a collection of decent songs but Gorillaz can be so much better than that.

60
The Observer

Just as 2010’s sprawling Plastic Beach had its introverted companion album The Fall, The Now Now is a breezy calm after Humanz’s storm.

60
The Needle Drop

The Now Now is a pleasant mood album while it's on—especially in comparison to Humanz—but it's still relatively low-impact.

60
The Telegraph

The Now Now ultimately sounds exactly what it is: music made on the road as an escape from homesickness.

60
The Independent

Stripped of the usual number of guests, The Now Now makes for a coherent record that acts more akin to a solo 2D album than full-on Gorillaz record.

60
Loud and Quiet

‘The Now Now’ – a Damon Albarn solo album in all but name, and a perfectly likeable one at that – leaves that question feeling rather pertinent: if your imaginary band stop sounding like an imaginary band, what’s the point in pretending anymore?

50
Highsnobiety

It would be one thing if Gorillaz set out to make an album of effortless funk ditties and the tunes were good, but it’s another thing entirely if the melodies don’t hold up. Without a clear statement of intent beyond ‘good times,’ The Now Now fails to justify its existence.

50
Consequence of Sound

Ostensibly a solo album by the band’s virtual ringleader 2-D, it pares down the guest stars and dials up the sense of desolation one feels when reading the morning paper.

50
The 405

Damon Albarn unleashes some deep space funk on new Gorillaz record, however most of the tropes found within are a few years too late.

40
Gigwise
Cartoonishly slapdash LP featuring a couple of summery saviours.
KIDWITHGUNs
80

I mean, it's no Plastic Beach but it's got some bops here and there.

exception
NR

Everything after Plastic Beach should never have been made.

ClayDJs03
50

GORILLAZ REVIEW SERIES (6/7): The Now Now

The penultimate entry in my Gorillaz review series, The Now Now is forty minutes of pure sleep fuel, the musical equivalent of gallivanting on a desolate, dreary shoreline under a sour milk sky, drowning out your boredom by scouring the rock pools for seashells. It’s enjoyable at first, as the wistful whispering winds and the gentle crashes of waves spark the neural connections in your brain, prompting a deluge of childhood memories to rush the ... read more

95

The vibes of this album are so good, this is my favorite gorillaz album of all time thanks to 2d's voice and tbe way he exlresses his mental state in the songs

comico
60

There are songs I like, but on the whole, this really is their most boring album.

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Track List

1Humility
3:17
86
2Tranz
2:42
86
3Hollywood
4:53
74
4Kansas
4:08
77
5Sorcererz
3:00
77
6Idaho
3:42
68
7Lake Zurich
4:13
76
8Magic City
3:59
79
9Fire Flies
3:53
80
10One Percent
2:21
71
11Souk Eye
4:34
89
Total Length: 40 minutes
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Added on: May 26, 2018