Gorillaz review – Damon Albarn and friends make a bit of live music history

O2 Area, London
Pop’s longest-serving imaginary band fill the reopened venue with deceptive chaos and the delight of feeling a part of something again

“It’s such a pleasure to be back,” says Gorillaz’s human representative, Damon Albarn, addressing a full and bouncing O2 Area. “Hundreds of people communing collectively. What an exquisite feeling. Thank you.” The gang roar as if they haven’t been to a gig in 18 months.

Who’d have thought that pop’s longest-serving imaginary band – as youthfully bony as once they have been first drawn by artist Jamie Hewlett in 1998 – would make a bit of real-life history by being the primary act to play the reopened O2 Area? Gorillaz and the O2 aren’t pure bedfellows, the former being ramshackle punk/dub/hip-hop futurists and the latter London’s most impersonal venue, but the area is the only place giant sufficient to hold them, in all senses. Outdoors, a big queue snakes around crash obstacles, and that’s simply to purchase hoodies; inside, each seat is occupied, and the stage itself teems with musicians, special friends and, onscreen, the gurning cartoon Gorillaz: Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and 2D. This is, in every respect, an enormous present.