Gorillaz -- D-Sides

5/10

D-Sides title is supposed to be a joke, a play on the fact that the songs contained within are the B-Sides from the album Demon Days. The title might as well be literal. These are D-Grade songs at best. They are at an absolutely embryonic, demo stage. From what I can gather, Damon Albarn recorded about 30 very rough demos for the excellent Demon Days, took the best fifteen, re-worked them, polished them, filled them out, and sequenced them for that album. The rest are left here to languish, and it's easy to see why they didn't make it to Demon Days. These players are not ready for prime time. The entirety of D-Sides has the same blurry, unfinished feeling as Gorillaz self-titled debut, but Gorillaz has some great songs. D-Sides has only one song that even approaches that level, and that is "Hong Kong," which was originally featured on a War Child charity album.

"Hong Kong"'s beautiful, Eastern instrumentation classes up the place a little bit, but not enough.
D-Sides second disc is full of remixes of Demon Days songs. I don't mean little tinkerings of the songs, though. I mean, full on, ten-minute "I am on ecstasy and sweating so much I might be swimming, but I'm not quite sure" remixes. They are decent for what they are. "DARE" and "Kids with Guns" get three-remixes a piece, and three other songs get single remixes to round out the tracklist. I listened to disc two once when I first got this album. I listened to it again for this review. That was enough. Stick to Gorillaz regular full-lengths.

2007 Parlophone/Virgin
Disc one
1. 68 State 4:48
2. People 3:27
3. Hongkongaton 3:33
4. We Are Happy Landfill 3:39
5. Hong Kong 7:15
6. Highway (Under Construction) 4:20
7. Rockit 3:33
8. Bill Murray (featuring The Bees) 3:52
9. The Swagga 4:57
10. Murdoc Is God 2:26
11. Spitting Out the Demons 5:10
12. Don't Get Lost In Heaven (original demo version) 2:59
13. Stop the Dams (featuring Ghostigital) 5:38

Disc two
1. DARE (DFA remix) 12:14
2. Feel Good Inc. (Stanton Warriors remix) 7:24
3. Kids with Guns (Jamie T's Turns to Monsters mix) 4:22
4. DARE (Soulwax remix) 5:42
5. Kids with Guns (Hot Chip remix) 7:09
6. El Mañana (Metronomy remix) 5:44
7. DARE (Junior Sanchez remix) 5:26
8. Dirty Harry (Schtung Chinese New Year remix) 3:53
9. Kids with Guns (Quiet Village remix) 10:08