Demon Days

The band on the cover of this album does not exist. They are four animated characters created by Damon Albarn of Blur and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett, a fictional group with backstories and personalities and a mythology that spans music videos and comic strips and interactive websites. The music, however, is entirely real and it is some of the most ambitious pop music made in the 2000s.

Albarn described Demon Days as a concept album about "the world in a state of night." He made it after traveling through impoverished rural areas of China and returning to a world consumed by war and fear and political collapse. He brought in De La Soul, MF DOOM, Neneh Cherry, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, Dennis Hopper, and the London Community Gospel Choir, and somehow made them all feel like pieces of the same dark, restless whole.

"Feel Good Inc." opens with a laugh that sounds like a threat and builds into one of the most infectious songs of its era, a track about numbness and distraction that makes you want to dance despite everything it is saying. "DARE" is pure cathartic release. "El Manana" is so beautiful it aches. The closing minutes of the album, with the gospel choir lifting over Albarn's piano, feel like a kind of redemption you did not realize you needed.

When they played this album live, the band performed in silhouette behind a screen showing Hewlett's animations. Even in concert, you were never supposed to see their faces. The music was always supposed to be bigger than any one person.

It is.