Learning to love themself

New album Gloria finds Sam Smith testing new waters and exploring queer themes

On each album to date, Albarn, and his sidekick, illustrator and animator Jamie Hewlett, have created self-contained worlds thick with narrative and colourful imagery, realised through kaleidoscopic pop music.

Like 2010's Plastic Beach, the foundations of Cracker Island lie in a fictional oasis. After the band relocated from their London base at Kong Studios to Silverlake Recording Studios in LA, they formed 'The Last Cult', a religious organisation with weirdness at its heart. In keeping with this, the video for the new album's title track sees the cult perform a ritual under the Hollywood sign. To each of the collaborators, and the cartoon band themselves, Cracker Island means something different. In the band's traditionally esoteric press statements, guitarist Noodle said that the album is "the sound of change and the chorus of the collective", with 2D adding: "The path to Cracker Island isn't easy to find 'cos it's underwater." So far, so strange.

On the songs themselves, 'Tired Influencer' paints the setting as "a cracked screen world", while Tame Impala's Kevin Parker sees it as a happier, romantic place on 'New Gold': "But in the magic cove, there's a pretty one / I wonder if she knows that we're underwater." As with most cults, every collaborator drafted in works towards the same common goal, and have been hand-picked carefully and perfectly for their roles. Although there are A-listers splashed all over Cracker Island, their appearances don't seem contingent on their star status, rather what they can bring to the songs.