Like the come down that follows a bad trip, the 1990s left Damon Albarn strung out and exhausted. Disillusioned with the expectations of the Britpop crowd, Gorillaz gave him a much needed opportunity to unwind and party. Cut free from his role as Blur’s frontman and disguised behind a cast of cartoon characters, Albarn used the project to indulge his love for hip-hop, cheesy samples and electronic beats. It was a good career move. His collaboration with Danger Mouse on 2005’s 'Demon Days' brought what had always eluded him in the past: commercial success in America.

On the surface Gorillaz third album 'Plastic Beach' resembles their earlier albums. It too features cheesy samples, retro grooves, a troupe of talented guest performers and a cheeky disregard for the constraints of genre. But be warned - unlike 'Demon Days', 'Plastic Beach' is no party album. Instead this is a schizophrenic trip through Damon Albarn’s emotional world, swerving between euphoria, paranoia and fragility. This, as Albarn once sang in the 1990s, is a low.

In a move which should please Blur fans, much of 'Plastic Beach' pulls away the cartoon-band conceit and puts the limelight squarely on Albarn himself. It finds him sighing over a bed of harmonies on the doe-eyed 80’s pop of ‘Melancholy Hill’ and exhaling bitter resignation on ‘Broken’. He gives one of best vocal performances of his career on the album centerpiece ‘Empire Ants’, a tender ballad that later morphs into delicious slice of synth-pop featuring rising Swedish electro band Little Dragon.

More than any of Gorillaz previous albums, 'Plastic Beach' is pierced with the same underlying sense of melancholy and dread that haunted Albarn’s The Good, The Bad and the Queen. ‘It’s all good news now because we left the taps running for a hundred years’ sings Albarn over the bouncy spy-movie synths of album closer ‘Pirate Jet’, but he’s sneering, not smiling. Even those tracks which feature big names of the American hip-hop scene can’t escape the underlying sense of unease. ‘The revolution will be televised’ Snoop Dogg announces in the album’s opening broadside, yet this feels less like a triumphant proclamation than a resigned observation.

The collaborations on 'Plastic Beach' are mostly a great success, however, Albarn’s guests contributing far more than the odd freestyle. On ‘Some Kind of Nature’ Lou Reed slurs his characteristic drawl all over a laid-back groove and a honky-tonk piano refrain stolen from the Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’. The title track features Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash and ends up sounding like something pulled from their own groove-laden double-album 'Sandinista!'

There are a few low spots and false starts. ‘White Flag’ waves a few too many cliches about the the struggling British everyman while the single ‘Superfast Jellyfish’ leaves no lasting impression. For the most part, however, 'Plastic Beach' is a great listen, and shows Albarn defying his critics’ expectations once again. This is Hip-hop for the English winter, a Britpop star reborn for the age of global warming.

8/10

By Gareth Sobey