As if it hadn’t escaped the attention of the Gorillaz co-creator, we’re in the Oasis heartlands. And in the city where more than anywhere else Damon Albarn’s name was once something of a joke, there’s a tidy air of closure about these shows.

It was, after all, Albarn’s hubristic part in the feud with Oasis that first made the cocksure singer aware of his own limitations as Blur’s frontman. Whatever his band were capable of artistically, their songs were never likely to resonate at street level, where hoods are worn up, ringtones are updated on a daily basis and trouser sizes start at XXL. Five years after they first emerged from the pen of Jamie “Tank Girl” Hewlett, Gorillaz’s second album, Demon Days, has taken Albarn to heights that Blur (and their adversaries) failed to scale.

Having taken up residency in the US Top Ten, the next logical step is to take the show on the road. Quite how you do that when your band is actually a cartoon combo is a moot point. With no one from the Gorillaz camp giving anything away, the scratching of heads gives way to a commotion up in one of the boxes. In apparent homage to Muppet curmudgeons Statler and Waldorf, moving latex replicas of 2D and Noodle ponder ideas for a catchphrase to go with their new-found celebrity. As it happens, it’s the only time that Gorillaz — in the form that MTV viewers know them — are the centre of attention.

That said, there’s no lack of spectacle on hand. Demon Days was an album loaded with guest cameos — and of those who lent their voices to its dystopian pop noir, only Dennis Hopper and the US rapper MF Doom are absent.

That Albarn is held in esteem these days by hip-hop’s most fertile imaginations is evidenced by the presence of De La Soul and the Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown, who tear into Feel Good Inc and Dirty Harry respectively with a celebratory zeal. Martina Topley-Bird and Roots Manuva saunter on to wax laconic over the skittering syncopations of All Alone. And if the idea of Ike Turner in a white sequin ed jacket tinkling the ivories on Every Planet We Reach is Dead seems incongruous, the sight of him is doubly improbable — one bettered tonight only by a jovial Shaun Ryder waggling his ample derrière over the chart-topping electro-funk of Dare.

And what of the band itself? Not Gorillaz, who sporadically appear on a screen above in an underwhelmingly static series of post-apocalyptic settings, but the musicians trusted with the job of bringing these songs to life? Silhouetted against various backlights, they’re supposed to be indistinguishable. But there’s no mistaking the stooped shadow of Albarn excitably jabbing the air on the album’s eponymous closer.

And as well he might. As the assembled gospel choir threatens to raise the roof and a near-subsonic bassline assails the floor, our earlier disappointment at the lack of holographic toon turns gives way to a more satisfying realisation — the music didn’t need them.

This review appeared in late editions yesterday

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