{"id":13194,"date":"2026-03-24T12:27:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T11:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194"},"modified":"2026-03-24T12:27:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T11:27:06","slug":"gorillaz-co-op-live-arena-reviewed-by-peter-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194","title":{"rendered":"Gorillaz @ Co-op Live Arena, reviewed by Peter Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albarn’s high-concept supergroup coalesces in a vibrant and cameo-filled multimedia performance<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gorillaz | Co-op Live Arena | 20th March 2026<\/strong>
Reviewed by Peter Wild<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the way back in 1998, Gorillaz was conceived as a virtual band by Blur\u2019s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, as a comment on the lack of substance in music TV. In the beginning, live dates saw the band hidden away in favour of what you might call animated spectacle. Over the intervening years, Gorillaz have largely become famous for two things \u2013 the breadth of their musical appetite (dipping their toes in everything from trip hop to hip hop to dub to punk rock to Latin-influenced music) and the strength of their collaborations (ranging from Manchester royalty like Shaun Ryder to the likes of Little Simz, Slowthai, and Snoop Dogg). All of which is on show as they come to the stage of the Co-op Live.<\/p>\n

There are three huge screens which occasionally function as brilliant red curtains, sweeping forth and back, calling to mind the Monkey<\/em> theatre show Albarn was involved with back in 2007 as part of the inaugural Manchester International Festival. Monkey<\/em> itself was a kind of forerunner of both the Gorillaz themselves as a unit but also the most recent album, The Mountain<\/em>. The musicians troop in, and there are about ten of them on the stage, including backing singers, when Albarn enters to rapturous applause.<\/p>\n

Kicking off with the title track from the new album, \u2018The Mountain\u2019 very much sets the tone for what follows: we have sitar played by Anoushka Shankar, bansuri (Indian bamboo flute) played by Ajay Prasanna, a sarod (fretless stringed instrument) and, of course, the tanpura, which creates a lovely background drone. All of this unspools with shots of the virtual Gorillaz characters \u2013 2-D, Murdoc, Russel Hobbs and Noodle \u2013 peering out from the screens alongside a recurrent triangular image of the mountain itself. The track culminates with Dennis Hopper (his vocals recorded as part of \u2018Fire Coming Out of the Monkey\u2019s Head\u2019, a track used on the album Demon Days<\/em> back in 2005) and Ajay Prasanna, Anoushka Shankar, Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash repeating the word \u2018Mountain\u2019. All of which sets the precedent for what follows: exotic instrumentation and a mixture of live and recorded performers, some of whom are no longer with us.<\/p>\n

Next up is \u2018The Happy Dictator\u2019 featuring Sparks, lead single from the new album. Although the song was inspired by Albarn\u2019s trip to Turkmenistan and the late Turkmen leader Saparmurat Niyazov, who established a dictatorship requiring citizens to be happy and banning negative news, you don\u2019t have to look far from the headlines to find parallels with (ahem) other world leaders. 2-D and Russell Mael sing \u2018If you\u2019re empty and abstracted and your heart is full of rage\u2019 as the backing singers sweetly intone, \u2018Oh what a happy land, o yeah\u2019. Alban is centre stage at the song\u2019s close, gurning like Blakey from On the Buses<\/em>. He wishes everyone a Happy Eid \u2013 it\u2019s the first of many such grace notes across the course of the show.<\/p>\n

We skip across the albums \u2013 \u2018Tranz\u2019 from 2018\u2019s The Now Now<\/em>, \u2018Tomorrow Comes Today\u2019 from their first ever EP (upon which Albarn plays the bewitching Samick Melodica which he\u2019ll pick up again and again throughout the night), \u201919-2000\u2019 from their 2001 debut album and \u2018Rhinestone Eyes\u2019 from 2010\u2019s Plastic Beach<\/em> \u2013 and the vast crowd laps it up. Joe Talbot, lead singer of British post-punk band Idles, joins Albarn on the stage for \u2018The God of Lying\u2019, the kind of skanky cod reggae track that wouldn\u2019t be out of place on a Tricky album. It\u2019s the first time in the evening when the thought coalesces that Gorillaz are the spiritual grandchildren of The Specials. It\u2019s a gig of highs \u2013 a beautiful rendition of \u2018On Melancholy Hill\u2019, a resurrected Mark E Smith on \u2018Delirium\u2019, and the satisfying double-whammy that is \u2018Stylo\u2019 and \u2018Damascus\u2019, the former fronted by Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def), the latter a collab between Bey and Syrian singer Omar Souleyman (who also supported Gorillaz). \u2018Damascus\u2019 is a plea for community at a time of war, and couldn\u2019t be more prescient. \u201cWe\u2019re all one community,\u201d Albarn says at the song\u2019s close and, once more, you can\u2019t help but feel this is the kind of message that puts Albarn on the right side of history at a time of division and variously stoked hatreds.<\/p>\n

On my way into the gig, as I made my way along the twisting queues of people making their way into the enormo-dome that is Co-op Live, I was swept up momentarily by a gang of drunken lads who were all keen to learn how many times I\u2019d seen Gorillaz before and who I liked best out of Blur and Oasis (some arguments will run on forever it seems). In a moment of drunken clarity one of the lads admitted that The Mountain<\/em> was \u201ca bit out there for me\u201d and yet he\u2019d come along to the gig because his mate\u2019s girlfriend couldn\u2019t make it. You can\u2019t help but hope that Gorillaz work their magic on some of those 23,000 people whose tastes aren\u2019t yet broad enough to encompass what Albarn is doing. Even if that\u2019s too much to hope for, the quartet of songs they close with \u2013 \u2018The Hardest Thing\u2019 and \u2018Orange County\u2019 from The Mountain<\/em> (both of which hark back to the melancholy of Blur\u2019s recent The Ballad of Darren<\/em>), \u2018Feel Good Inc\u2019 (featuring Pos from De La Soul) and \u2018Clint Eastwood\u2019 \u2013 bring the house down.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Peter Wild<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albarn’s high-concept supergroup coalesces in a vibrant and cameo-filled multimedia performance Gorillaz | Co-op Live Arena | 20th March 2026Reviewed by Peter Wild All the way back in 1998, Gorillaz was conceived as a virtual band by Blur\u2019s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, as a comment on the lack of substance in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nGorillaz @ Co-op Live Arena, reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gorillaz @ Co-op Live Arena, reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Albarn’s high-concept supergroup coalesces in a vibrant and cameo-filled multimedia performance Gorillaz | Co-op Live Arena | 20th March 2026Reviewed by Peter Wild All the way back in 1998, Gorillaz was conceived as a virtual band by Blur\u2019s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, as a comment on the lack of substance in […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-03-24T11:27:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/gorillaz-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194\",\"name\":\"Gorillaz @ Co-op Live Arena, reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-03-24T11:27:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-03-24T11:27:06+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=13194#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Gorillaz @ Co-op Live Arena, reviewed by Peter Wild\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. 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