release date: Nov. 25, 2011
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5]
producer: Gorillaz
label: Parlophone - nationality: England, UK
Compilation album by Gorillaz. It's already the band's 3rd compilation album, but it's first best of collection. In 2002 the compilation album G-sides was released containing B-sides to tracks from its first issues (eps and the debut) - the title referring to 'Gorillaz', and in 2007 they released the remix and B-sides album D-sides, this time referring to Demon Days, as it follows; however, The Singles Collection 2001-2011 is of course a summarized catalogue containing its best selling tracks from three studio albums. It's striking that it doesn't contain a single track from The Fall (Dec. 2010), which kind of reflects what many critics suggest that it was more of an extra release meant for the fan base - "a gift" from Albarn with his own experiments, and not as much the result of worked-through compositions.
The Singles collection is a quite nice collection, although, it only contains material from three albums. So who's it for then? It's more of a "buy-this-if-you-don't-have-all-3!"-album, and yeah, all three albums do contain some fillers that you're necessarily left without. What the album also sustain is that Gorillaz in fact is a singles-project reflecting contemporary music industry in a nutshell: A large amount of artists and bands of 'popular' music are nowadays more preoccupied in the making of singles meant for streaming services than spending weeks and months recording and producing studio albums. That said, this The Singles Collection 2001-2011 is a mighty fine collection / release.
[ allmusic.com, Q Magazine, Uncut 4 / 5, Rolling Stone 3,5 / 5 stars ]
