Gorillaz

My one main regret in life is not seeing the Gorillaz on their first world tour.

I was 14, I had never been to a concert before, and Damon Albarn (ex-band member of Blur) and his fake pop group Gorillaz were playing at one of Toronto’s sketchier clubs. I didn’t go to the show, but all my friends did, and not only did they see one of the band’s first North American shows, but a truly groundbreaking performance.

The band was supporting their 2001 self-titled album. In the coming years the band got bigger, the stage got larger, the animated screen became a massive projected curtain with four-storey 3D figures playing along, and members of The Clash came on board.

In 2005 they released Demon Days, and with Albarn feeling he could never make another strong record under the Gorillaz banner, they decided to finish the project. But like most band breakups it didn’t last very long, with the band officially releasing a new studio album with 2010’s Plastic Beach, followed by the iPad-recorded The Fall.

Speaking without a shred of hyperbole, the Gorillaz are one of the most important bands of the past 10 years. No other group has created such a spectacular multimedia project with the beats to back up the visuals.

Which is why it’s kind of silly that they would release a singles album, being that Gorillaz have always been about making dense albums to be listened to from front to back. But that doesn’t mean The Singles Collection 2001-2011 is a bad album.

Capturing all their top hits like “Dirty Harry”, “Clint Eastwood”, “DARE” and “Stylo”, as well as one-off remixes from their albums D-Sides and G-Sides, The Singles Collection is a perfect summary from one of the decade’s coolest bands.

But if you want to listen to Gorillaz the way they are supposed to be heard, grab all four studio albums (preferably with some of Albarn’s favourite party favours—this is a dub band, after all).