The British virtual band debuts on SNL with songs from their first album and their latest
Gorillaz debuted as Saturday Night Live musical guest by performing a song from their first album, Gorillaz, and their most recent album, The Mountain.
The British virtual band opened with “Clint Eastwood,” the lead single off their self-titled 2001 album. The song, which Rolling Stone placed number 38 on the 100 best songs of the 2000s, is similar to the theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the 1966 film in which Eastwood starred. Del the Funky Homosapien, who raps the verses, joined the group on stage.
Gorillaz’s second song was “The Moon Cave” from The Mountain, their follow-up to 2023’s Cracker Island. Singer-songwriter Asha Puthli, rapper Black Thought and sitar player Anoushka Shankar joined them.
Each of the songs on the fifteen-track album has at least one collaborator, some of whom appear posthumously. On “The Moon Cave,” those were guitarist and singer Bobby Womack and Dave Jolicoeur of De La Soul.
“I just thought, if we’re going to talk about the subject of death, I need some people who are dead to help me talk about it,” Damon Albarn told Rolling Stone last month in a wide-ranging interview alongside co-creator Jamie Hewlett.
The album was made amid personal losses for each member, as well as a formative trip to India. It applies Indian classical instrumentation, and lyrics are spoken in multiple languages, including Hindi. Other songs on it include “The Manifesto” and “Damascus.”
Gorillaz’s The Mountain tour begins later this month in the U.K. The group has top billing at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival in June and Atlanta’s Shaky Knees festival in September.
