Music Video of the Week: Gorillaz - "Stylo"

Part of the joke with Gorillaz (who unveiled their rather excellent new album on Monday) has always been that immense amounts of efforts have gone into fabricating a band that is the height of entitled rock-star apathy - few Grammy gestures have been as hilariously anarchic as lead singer 2-D texting during their show-opening performance. That's a clever enough conceit, but it has occasionally resulted in their music videos being somewhat static and occasionally dull.

Thankfully, the new video for their single "Stylo" finds the group at its most, well, animated as they find themselves in a plot that's one part "Mad Max" and two parts Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof". Reproduced as CGI characters driving through a live-action desert, our disheveled, possibly hung-over heroes enter in a bullet-hole-ridden muscle car that looks like the result of a drug deal gone wrong. There's a nice attention to facial detail in the animation here, such as the twitches on bassist Murdoc's curdled-milk-colored face (also, guitarist Noodle was apparently a robot all along). Director Jamie Hewlett also brings a nice tension to the proceedings, particularly through his direction of a well-known cameo-ing actor who is clearly having a ball hamming it up here. The single may not have the same kind of monstrous catchiness that "Clint Eastwood" or "Feel Good Inc."did , but the video is as good as anything Gorillaz has done to date.

-Raj Ranade '10

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vAOzYz-Qs&feature=player_embedded