Gorillaz Invade America!

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 27, 2010 4:40PM

Gorillaz, the animated pop "supergroup" driven by the vision of Blur's Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, is headed to American shores this fall for a proper tour after a handful of appearances on either coast earlier this year. The band's latest release, Plastic Beach, is a knotty conceptual masterpiece that mixes dark themes with undeniable hooks, subtly crafted around a rogue's gallery of unlikely collaborators.

Plastic Beach is a fitting commentary on consumerism and big business eroding both our social and ecological structure, arriving with a bone-chilling timeliness just a few months before BP's horrific mistakes and subsequent Gulf area disaster and response. We predict Plastic Beach is an album that will not only land near the top of many year-end lists, but will probably go down as both the Gorillaz's finest hour and a modern classic. And no, we're not exaggerating.

The band's live shows have deftly mixed animated visuals in conjunction with the live band performances and they tend towards epic grandeur without compromising the thrill of the live performances. The visual complement the music but they don't constrain it. The group's date in Chicago is at the UIC Pavilion -- not the best venue for this sort of thing but we'll take what we can get -- on October 16. If you're a member of the Gorillaz fanclub or a CitiBank card holder you get a jump on pre-sale tickets as early as next week, but general tickets go on sale on August 27. We recommend picking them up that morning since this show will sell out pretty quickly.

Check out the video for the band's latest single, "On Melancholy Hill," after the jump.