Character from Gorillaz by Damon Albarn & Jamie Hewlett
Russel's deceased first love — a girl from Brooklyn whose memory anchors him and whose absence shaped the man he became.
Evangeline was Russel's first love, killed in the same drive-by that took Del and the others. She didn't lodge inside him the way Del did — she passed through and on — but she left a shape in him that nothing has quite filled. Russel doesn't talk about her. The other band members know enough not to ask. She exists in the Gorillaz mythology as the sorrow underneath Russel's steadiness — the reason the gentle giant is gentle, and the reason the gentleness has weight. Music, for Russel, is partly keeping something alive that would otherwise be entirely gone.
In Russel's memory, she is vivid — bright eyes, natural hair, a laugh that lit up rooms. The way she appears in his recollections has the quality of something very carefully preserved: detailed, specific, slightly too clear to be comfortable.
Also known as: Evangeline