Everything about King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard is governed by a constant forward movement, from the relentless movement of their music to their frequent reactions to the tendency to release new albums with Substack newsletter consistency. But while there’s a lot of joy in connecting yourself to a Melbourne-rockers care locomotive, the group’s recent history suggests they could benefit from building some guard rails, with the honky- glam hoedown de Fishing for fish and the doomsday disaster of Infest Rat’s Nest veering too sharply into the foolish and the sullen, respectively.
Of course, the nice thing about this fertile band is that any mistakes are quickly left in the dust and course correction is almost inevitable, and in the case of King Gizzard, it can’t even be a disease- global spread to make their roll slower. In addition to releasing several live releases, two concert films, and a slew of Bandcamp covers a few months ago, King Gizzard recorded two records worth of new material while locking down, with each a member of the sextet is now putting down their parts on their own at their home studios. The results were presented in two installments: KG, released last November, and its new counterpart, LW They are separate plates, but are joined together to form a continuous double disc, folded within a trilogy: KG and LW It is described as the other parts of triptych that started with 2017 Flying microtonal banana, where the band fully embraced the symmetrical effects of quarter-tone tuning.
But while the works may be technically related, the KG / LW a combo deserves its own special place in the band’s labyrinthine catalog. Arriving 10 years from King Gizzard, the records serve the same function as the explosion Freedom Goblin they performed for their peer-to-peer psych-punk punk Se Seall: They span a decade of wild action by resolving the band’s overall impact into a complete, 360-degree picture of the group. The wild style variation in the King Gizzard canon has made them the kind of band where 10 fans could name 10 different albums as their favorite; KG / LW striving to be the only thing everyone can agree on.
Inspired by two radical versions of their new de facto theme song “KGLW” – similar to John Carpenter’s soundtrack provided by prog-folk and doom-metal revivals—KG / LW it has a rounded structure reminiscent of the organization’s 2016 endless loop opus Infinity Nonagon. But the sense of coherence of the records is more than just the product of a vibrant series. Through the course of these records, King Gizzard synthesizes a whole set of their music patterns – British psych-pop and proto-metal, German kosmische rock, West African rhythms, Middle Eastern melodies, sitar-speckled psychedelia, American roots music – into still tight songs let equal space for success for the band and the band’s amateur movements.
KGin particular, there is a natural fluency that maintains that it was built piecemeal, and a steady rhythmic effort that mirrors the speed with which its scorched-Earth words. As the album expands, each song emerges as a new look at some of the relentless dystopian Disney ships through the grave dangers to our civilization: unexamined AI (“Automation”), radical trolls on the right (“Lower Brain Size”), the instability of modern capitalism (“Straws in the Wind”), xenophobia stand pandemic (“Some of Us”).
On this opening piece, King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard reaffirm their status as the house band for geopolitical turmoil after Trump, but instead of conceptual chambers about barfing robots and interstellar colonialism, KG feeling much more basic, even personal. The album’s vibrant one-hour stand, “Ontology” and “Oddlife,” each reflect on the meaning of life from the opposition of macro and micro-squares. Where the first one translates his big unknown questions (“Why is there a man? / Why do we think? / What is the point? / Why anything? ”) To the point of desperation with which you can dance, the latter is a vague sight. at the physical, mental experience of touring: “Geography is not a concept,” the band Stu MacKenzie sings, “I wake up and I’m still fat / I drink to will I be dead in my sleep. ”
But if “Oddlife” seems to go against the rest of the album’s contemporaries (not to mention a few moments for a moment when many groups would kill to feel it burned by going on tour again), it ultimately speaks to a universal puzzle: the fact that we are often left too drained by our working lives to fight the front of a larger battle. And as “The Hungry Wolf of Fate” closes KG in a fuzz-metal firestorm, we are reminded that catastrophic failure and alert to the warnings of history will have a devastating effect on us all. “We are in the minds of pissants” who have not “learned consciousness,” Mackenzie exclaims, suggesting that our decline is not only certain but certain, but well deserved.
So, after you see how humanity is taken to the dustbin, what is left to do? Well, if the opening of the LW as a sign, there is still time for King Gizzard and the Wizard of Lizard to cross “creating the strangest Steely Dan obedience act in the world” from their bucket list. LWThe lead way is, “If not now, then when?” snaps into a crisp, clavinet spin Aja groove while Mackenzie reveals Kevin Parker isn’t the only Australian psych-rocker hiding falsetto killer. The ruins are still ruined – rising oceans, wildfires, endangered species – but their execution is surprisingly affected by their strong friction by repackaging the same messages.
As that sudden change indicates, LW there’s more of a grip bag, and a feeling of reduction returns creeps in as tracks like “ONE” revolve around the same musical and ideological realm. Of course, LW similar to each other KG after a further three months of locking: He is thinner, angrier, and less anxious about letting his gut hang out, allowing motor-folk-motor “Static Electricity ”Accumulated towards the six-minute mark in a fire of microtonal drag. But if the songs are richer, the targets are more precise. Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s “Supreme Ascendancy” is a horrific attack on the Catholic Church’s history of sexual abuse coverage; At the same time, “East West Link,” complains about a named highway plan that has become a political lightning rod in Melbourne, resulting in the most intriguing song about urban planning proposal you tend to hear it all year round.
But as their social consciences and worldly views have been at the heart of their identity, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard still have a sense of secret society – and the closing eight-minute version of “KGLW” is the anthem. His national anthem, a metal soda-mantra that repeats the band’s initials as if casting old spells to awaken a long-awaited mythical animal. The rabid fanbase of King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard has been referred to as culture many times; discuss this song – and KG / LW in total – the official induction event.
Buy: Rough Trade
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