For me, Blur can never quite touch Damon Albarn’s mighty Gorillaz. They epitomise everything that I love about pure pop music: its sheer malleability. Albarn and co-founder Jamie Hewlett are like kids at Christmas, equipped with an infinite set of Lego bricks and the imagination to create infinite brilliant worlds with them. This, their ninth album, navigates many worlds and moods, and crosses genres effortlessly. They’ve always seen how pop excels with playful experimentation, and The Mountain, as the title suggests, is the apex of Gorillaz thus far. It’s brilliant, the kind of album which will have critics reaching for hyperbolic epithets. I will try to rein mine in.

Co-produced by Gorillaz with James Ford, Samuel Eggerton, Remi Kabaka Jr and Argentine producer Bizarrap, it was recorded all over the world, in locations as diverse as London, Devon and India. Thematically, there are political statements, as with Sparks’ collaboration, the typically louche electronic sashay ‘The Happy Dictator ‘, or loss as with their cinematic ‘The Hardest Thing’ featuring the much-missed Tony Allen. Indeed, several collaborations here feature some posthumous vocals. Bobby Womack lends his gritty funk to ‘The Moon Cave’, while the choral swoon of ‘Delirium’ is upended by the unmistakable Mancunian snarl of the irrepressible Mark E Smith. Such contributions remind us of the indelible impact on music these elder statesmen provided over the last five decades, and are rather moving.

Elsewhere, Anoushka Shankar’s shimmering sitar pops up on several tracks including the title track, ‘The Plastic Guru’, ‘The Sweet Prince’ and ‘The Empty Dream’. It’s moments like these that are reminders of Albarn’s breadth of influences. Bollywood legend Asha Bhosle lends her gorgeous sinewy vocals to ‘The Shadowy Light’, while ‘Damascus’ is a perfect fusion of Syrian soul and hip-hop.

More typical of early Gorillaz are the fuzzy waltz of ‘Casablanca ‘ with Paul Simonon and Johnny Marr, and IDLES’ playful malevolence in ‘The God of Lying’, but the relentless nature of the album’s tonal shifts and genre hybrids are dizzying in the best way possible. Gorillaz are a timely reminder of what pop, something often dismissed as ephemeral or trivial, can mutate into: something powerful, poignant and utterly life-affirming.