Gorillaz

“El Mañana”

Dir. Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland



Gorillaz are without a doubt my favorite virtual band comprised of animated apes, so it’s nice to see an interesting and dramatic video for the five thousandth (okay, fourth) single from “Demon Days.” It’s also nice to see that Gorillaz are all about teaching important life lessons: although it may seem cool to live in a windmill on an island floating through the clouds, the lifestyle has its drawbacks.

“Guitarist” Noodle learns this hard fact in “El Mañana,” which starts out with an idyllic scene as she dangles her feet lazily from the island, but quickly turns violent as helicopters swoop down out of nowhere and start strafing. The rest of the video is just burning and crashing. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the video ends with a shot from below of a bomb being dropped on the poor girl. It’s hard to say what’s happening here, other than that it’s a continuation of some events from the “Feel Good, Inc.” video: have the Gorillaz acquired a well-funded arch-nemesis (the Poachaz, perhaps)?

Regardless of the explanation (which, luckily, isn’t needed, since music-video death isn’t character death), like all of the Gorillaz videos, “El Mañana” is a beautiful piece of animation, full of dramatic angles and rich tones. However, unlike the “Feel Good, Inc.” video, “El Mañana” doesn’t make any concessions to being a music video: it’s all story and no connection to the music, which is the price to pay for making essentially a sequel to the first video. While the visuals are far more memorable than the music here, one out of two for the apes is better than most human bands manage.

—Elisabeth J. Bloomberg