Hot off two-decade-year anniversary celebrations of their breakout LP Demon Days, hotter of the release of their most fully realized record in over 15 years, The Mountain, and on the verge of celebrating 25 years of their self-titled debut, Gorillaz have been extremely busy lately. Our recent print cover stars currently have a quarter century of lore on display at their vibrant House of Kong exhibit in LA and will begin their world tour in support of the record later this week, ultimately touching down in North America this fall, but this weekend the group celebrated a monumental first: performing on Saturday Night Live.
Introduced by the episode’s guest host Ryan Gosling, Damon Albarn first took to the stage with a backing band and emcee Del the Funky Homosapien to perform Gorillaz’s iconic 2001 single “Clint Eastwood” and returned later in the evening to showcase their new material via “The Moon Cave,” the single from their recently released LP that features contributions from Asha Puthli, Black Thought, and Anoushka Shankar. I didn’t watch the rest of the episode, so I’m not entirely sure why Gosling looks like that while introducing the former track.
Check out both performances below. You can find tickets to their upcoming tour dates here, and get some in-depth backstory on the new record via our cover story here.
