King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Psychedelic alterations

There are usually two quite different reasons why the term psychedelia gets used: the first stems from the need to catalogue artistic and musical output purely for the sake of evaluation and analysis, while the second is tied to the cultural genesis of the movement and to the psychic stimulation, through chemical and natural means, aimed at triggering unusual sensory and mental perceptions. The adventurous, raw and at times abstract way in which King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard tackle the canons of psychedelia places the Melbourne band in a brilliant middle ground, where codified criteria get stirred up with reckless intent, exciting both 60s nostalgics and fans of contemporary psychedelia alike.

Their story begins in 2010, when the seven guys tore down territorial barriers and the 400-kilometre distance between Anglesea and Deniliquin, which placed them at opposite ends of Australia, to bring to life all the ideas they'd developed during their university studies in Melbourne.

Like a new generation of Flaming Lips, Stu Mackenzie, Joe Walker, Eric Moore, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Lucas Skinner, Cook Craig and Michael Cavanagh pack their sonic container with a huge range of musical influences, destabilizing the psychedelic language in the manner of Frank Zappa, starting from the seeds planted by the legendary "Nuggets" compilation, swerving quickly towards Pavement and outdoing Thee Oh Sees in sheer nonsense and schizophrenia.

Three guitars, a distorted harmonica, driving, destructuring rhythms (two drummers), lyrics whose sole purpose is to channel the singing into rage and grit, and above all plenty of rock'n'roll: that's the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard formula.

2011 is a year rich in record-related events: the two singles from the previous year ("Hey There" and "Sleep") are followed by a new seven-inch ("Black Tooth") and two EPs. The first, Anglesea, playfully toys with radio popularity ("Eddie Cousin") and b-movie sounds ("Tomb/Beach"), while the second, Willoughby's Beach, released on 10-inch vinyl, is considered by the band to be their true debut (all material released before it is excluded from their official discography).

The twenty-three minutes of Willoughby's Beach immediately throw garage, r&b, surf, western blues and a psychedelia that's never lazy or sprawling (unlike, say, that of Acid Mother Temple) into the mix. It's a lazy yet creative sound that, between the psychedelic harmonica-driven shuffle of "Let It Bleed", the incendiary cosmic twang-rock of "Crookedile", the inspired acid-tinged pop-surf of "Black Tooth" and the beat temptations of "Stoned Mullet", brings together a mixture of rock seeds without ever burying it in useless frills, keeping up a pleasantly noisy smirk throughout.

Whether it's the sexual irreverence of "Dead Beat", the kitsch thrill of "Lunch Meat" or the sudden burst of lyrical pride on the title track, everything here sounds naively and irreverently wholesome.

The band's intense live activity has built up a large and devoted fanbase, and the press has opened the floodgates of lofty comparisons, lumping them in with the new standard-bearers of the psychedelic revival, namely Tame Impala and Pond, but even if it sounds irreverent to many, I prefer to compare King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard to a new breed of B-52's fermented in sour yogurt.

In truth, this playful impudence is one of the best things that could have happened to pop-rock, not just in Australia: it's not the aesthetics or spiritual force of psychedelia that drives their music, but the creative unpredictability of these seven guys, who destabilize boredom without founding any new ideological or musical cults - pure fun.

When the first King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard album came out in September 2012, there was no longer any doubt about their real intentions: it kicks off straight away with distorted guitars and vocals in true punk-band fashion ("Elbow"), before plunging into a noise catharsis where rock'n'roll remains the only recognizable element (the magnificent "Muckraker").

12 Bar Bruise offers a more realistic picture of the band's live potential: the sound is rawer and more energetic, almost freakish, recorded in the studio using no fewer than 4 iPhones, thus giving rise to a new strain of post-technological lo-fi.

The album is packed with little future classics: garage sounds toy with scraps of rhythm & blues on the Troggs-esque title track, a book about Native Americans becomes the lyrics for a former instrumental that, through Morricone-style spaghetti-western-blues tones, anticipates the feats of a future soundtrack ("Sam Cherry's Last Shot"), and an attempt at rock-blues normalization turns into yet another triumph of invention ("Sea Of Trees").

But the standout tracks of this bold, raw album are the unstoppable garage-psych flow of "Nein" and the rough-edged nod to Stooges on "Garage Liddiard" - at times the record seems to lose sight of the basics ("High Hopes Low") or messes around too much ("Cut Throat Boogie"), but when it hits the mark ("Footy Footy") it turns a throwaway riff into an irresistible pop song.

At this point the press opens its doors to the band with features and cover stories, while their live activity continues at a frantic pace with an ever-growing crowd of fans; the group gets invited to major festivals (Falls Music and Arts Festival, Queenscliff Music Festival, Cherry Rock) and keeps up the relentless release schedule, putting out a new album just six months later.

Eyes Like The Sky came about almost as a lark, an extension of the spaghetti-western atmospheres of "Sam Cherry's Last Shot", featuring the legendary Broderick Smith (The Dingoes) as narrator and lyricist.

The band's passion for the film "Dead Man" comes through unmistakably: it's an imaginary soundtrack, where the dusty sound of the harmonica and the grimy guitars drive a hypnotic sequence that stirs up the darkest western tropes with blues drones ("Drum Run"), tributes to Ennio Morricone ("The Raid") and daring experimental touches ("The God Mans Goat Lust"), revealing a broader, more evolved take on psychedelia than their debut had suggested.

This creative restlessness isn't just a sonic gimmick: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard conjure up genuine little gems of western-inflected psychedelia here: the riff of "Year Of Our Lord" is hard to ignore, and "Evil Man" is the perfect fit for the surreal story that forms the album's backdrop - the tale of a Mexican-Irish boy kidnapped by Native Americans who wins back his freedom by killing his captors through deadly trials, a story more corrosive than a Tarantino film and more enthralling than a Clint Eastwood classic.

The show at Melbourne's Hotel Corner with 800 ecstatic fans marked the band's leap from local success to the big stage, with a tour supporting The Drones, an Australian band well known in America. For the seven guys, it was time to get serious.

Float Along, Fill Your Lungs is the band's third album in just over a year, another showcase of their eclecticism. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard move onto the same ground as Tame Impala, with vertiginous guitar feedback, sitar and shoegaze injections; this time the fire in the sound relies not on naive sketches but on sheer skill and technical mastery, paying tribute to the history of classic psychedelic rock.

The sixteen minutes of the opening "Head On/Pill" are a slap in the face to anyone who accused Stu Mackenzie of excessive self-indulgence: the melody slithers hypnotically between sitar chords and reverb, speeding up and slowing down the rhythm and the guitar forays, sweepingly dragging the track toward a glorious finale, while the nearly three minutes of the following "I Am Not A Man Unless I Have A Woman" immediately seal off any doubts or hesitation - the band's surf-blues-psych-pop has never sounded so wickedly seductive.

The sudden Californian ecstasy of "30 Past 7", entrusted to subterranean glitch, and the tribal post-modernism of "Mystery Jack" are excellent examples of psychedelic pop; the oddness of "God Is Calling Me Back Home" is instantly forgiven thanks to the magic of the title track and of "Let Me Mend The Past", which seem to have surfaced from some old 60s album.

At this point King Gizzard's career takes on peculiar contours: in the 18 months between Willoughby's Beach and Float Along, Fill Your Lungs, the band put together an anthological representation of psychedelia. From the acid-surf of "Black Tooth" to the raga-sitar ecstasy of "Head On/Pill", the journey is only apparently short. What really makes the Melbourne sextet's music so thrilling is that freak attitude that keeps both the Pink Floyd-esque lysergic sprawl and the Grateful Dead-style technical showing-off at bay — a creative choice that lets pop nuances coexist without loosening the instrumental tension. Their songwriting keeps growing and places their output in the wake of Flaming Lips' eclecticism, finally laying psychedelia down in the arms of lo-fi to create a new archetype of garage-psych-rock for the technological age (let's not forget the band used iPhones to record some of this material).

Marked by a special tri-fold-gatefold vinyl pressing exclusive to Record Store Day, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's latest artifact, Oddments, confirms their adventurous musical sense of humor, though without amounting to a genuine stylistic revolution.

Unlike Brian Jonestown Massacre, the Australians don't indulge in epic excursions: their live performances are explosive, frantic, loaded with sexual innuendo and dripping with sweat.

Oddments seems intent on restating the pure-fun ethos that has always driven the band's path: almost like latter-day Dukes Of Stratosfear, these guys play with the history of psychedelic pop-rock more openly than ever.

The organ-and-drums runaway of opener "Alluda Majaka" evokes MC5 and Booker T & the MGs, "Stressin'" is the offspring of a softer, more listless Jimi Hendrix but wouldn't look out of place on the Beatles' "White Album", "Vegemite" grabs the most shameless strand of their homeland's pop by the throat with irreverent goofiness, and "It's Got Old" even dares to take on T-Rex and the Kinks.

At this point no one would have the nerve to leap into the present by bringing in Air's spacey effusions, but King Gizzard love taking risks, and so here comes "Work This Time", with bass and keys chasing the perfect atmosphere — a pause that the self-referential sampler of "Ababcd" burns through in a matter of seconds, before dragging in the early-album Rolling Stones and a string of obscure Nuggets-era bands on "Sleepwalker".

In this long chain of citations King Gizzard nail at least two little masterpieces: the first, "Hot Wax", pairs a devilish Knack-Talking Heads riff with raw, abrasive rock-blues in the style of the Cramps; the other, "Pipe Dream", sketches a thrilling jam-session that fades into the Simon & Garfunkel-Nick Drake folk of "Homeless Man In Adidas". The album closes with the psychedelic noise-shoegaze of the title track, not forgetting the Lynyrd Skynyrd-style southern rock of "Crying" (almost a new "Sweet Home Alabama").

Worth mentioning is their presence on the album "Nuggets: Antipodean Interpolations Of The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968" (a tribute by Australian bands to the legendary album produced by Lenny Kaye), as well as the colored 12-inch vinyl reissue of "Head On/Pill" (yet another limited edition); it's also worth noting the lack of sources for a more detailed history of the band, but the mystery is just one more piece of a puzzle that seems to be taking shape more and more. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are destined to leave a mark on today's music scene, and their urge to surprise and have fun with music and vinyl (yes, they love vinyl so much they call CD versions "shit") is further sealed by the band's decision to give away their entire discography as a free digital download — resisting this latest cultural provocation would be a real crime, fun is guaranteed.

2014 is a year full of satisfaction for the band, who expand the boundaries of their cult status, catching the interest of the Heavenly label and making their first full-scale album with wider reach, seeing them reviewed by Mojo for the first time. The little over 40 minutes of I'm In Your Mind Fuzz are another mighty kick in the backside to every convention of rock music, a mesmeric, obsessive flow resembling a ritual groove where everyone gets to experience new post-peyote ecstasies. The first four tracks form a single body akin to the glorious totem of "Head On/Pill", but wilder and less self-indulgent, almost a sneer at anyone hoping for a mellower, more senile maturity from the band.

The two drum kits grow ever more relentless, the harmonica frays into greater dissonance, the vocals distort losing all sense of time and place, the blues pushes further to the fore, and the flute turns out to be the real novelty of their fifth album (seventh counting the two EPs). It's a record full of episodes bordering on the crude, smeared with blues and psychedelia with no rules whatsoever ("Satan Speeds Up"), set between two lysergic drones aptly named slow jams ("Slow Jam 1" and "Her And I - Slow Jam 2").

As hilarious as a mod band and as irreverent as a garage-punk outfit, the Australians once again prove to be the most skillful forgers of psychedelic trance with fewer than three chords — and not just because the blunt opening quartet of "I'm In Your Mind", "I'm Not In Your Mind", "Cellophane" and "I'm In Your Mind Fuzz" actually offers more (mono)chromatic variation than a Beethoven symphony, but also because when things get serious it's hard to stay immune to their orgiastic, liberating charm. It's precisely in the seven minutes of the little masterpiece "Am I In Heaven?" that their skill as composers and deconstructors of their own lyrical creations becomes clear, rising above the banality of mere revivalists.

Don't expect any moments of relaxation or dip in tension on I'm In Your Mind Fuzz: among the gems already mentioned lurk pop-funk obsessions with an unexpected underground slant ("Empty") and eclectic flute-driven landscapes ("Hot Water"), whose sole purpose is to create a continuous, rapturous ecstasy that will leave you, if not happy, at least carefree.

That King Gizzard are philosophers of psychedelic sound is even more evident in the playful, ironic quartet of equal-length tracks (10:10) that make up Quarters, a delightful mini-album that arrived on the market almost unnoticed, despite the buzz stirred up by I'm In Your Mind Fuzz. Once again the mix of sounds comes across as pleasantly crumbled, featuring Grateful Dead-style digressions and relentless rhythmic twists ("The River"); the sonic hypnosis always unfolds with grace and never through sheer complexity of harmonic weave, brushing against magic and obsessive ecstasy on the lysergic, visionary "Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer": an almost dreamlike digression that draws its energy from the other three tracks, dissolving their earthly ties and setting them free toward a psychedelic dimension that absorbs Eastern influences and chant-like melodies.

The album's basic concept, however, can't quite mask a few slight strains: the two middle tracks don't shine as brightly as the rest, their lyrical hook feels a bit thin, even if the doo-wop echoes of "God Is In Rhythm" are delightful and finely calibrated in their almost immaterial sonic design, pitting Beck against Todd Rundgren in an unlikely stylistic duel.

With the most fun chapter of their discography now filed away, the band still stirs the waters, veering toward a psycho-acoustic liturgy that blends easy-listening derived from soft-country with pop-soul poised between Stax and Motown.

The foray into the sunshine-pop of Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, built on acoustic guitars, drums, piano, flute, clarinet, double bass, electric bass, violin, percussion, sitar, bongos and congas, is not only successful and effective, but finally also highlights the quality of the songwriting.

Aside from the not-entirely-successful pop-minimalist attempt of "Trapdoor", the rest of the record is marked by a vibrant stylistic diversity that encompasses mellow-jazz ("Sense"), southern-rock ("Cold Cadaver") and jangle-pop in a psychedelic-Love vein ("Dirt").

The Melbourne boys toy with songs like modern-day Simon & Garfunkel enamoured with the lysergic sonic rain of Arthur Lee, and even though the vocals are deliberately kept low in the mix, it's impossible not to fall for these twelve excellent psych-pop miniatures.

Paper Mâché Dream Balloon adds at least two more classics to their already sizeable repertoire: one is the superb "The Bitter Boogie", which "uncivilly" joins an Iron Butterfly-style groove with the irreverence of T-Rex; the other is "Most Of What I Like", a perfect synthesis of fiction and reality, the band's constant oxymoron, which keeps intact that almost naive attitude that has accompanied them since their debut and which also sees them cross paths with progressive flourishes à la Genesis ("Paper Mâché", "Bone") and rhythmic irregularities à la Cardiacs ("Time = Fate", "Time = $$$"), all without ever losing their sense of restraint and grace.

Having set aside the pastoral interlude of Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, King Gizzard And Lizard Wizard return to celebrating chaos, cementing their stylistic path with one of the most intense and creative albums of their career. Volleys of guitars, quivering blues undercurrents and cosmic-rock whirlwinds weave a series of repeated chords ad libitum with subtle structural variations born of a greater attention to the resources of the recording studio. A concept album not so much thematically as sonically and stylistically, Nonagon Infinity is in fact a suite that benefits from a powerful personality and a varied songwriting that becomes even more evident and perceptible with repeated, attentive listens.

Garage, punk, psychedelia, progressive and hard rock are once again at the centre of the band's melting pot, which, with exuberant spontaneity, puts the most impulsive side of their music into play, entrusting the central body of the compositions to the valuable interplay of the two drummers.

An exemplary, mature album, Nonagon Infinity offers one of the finest reworkings of punk fury in the relentless guitar whirlwind of "Big Fig Wasp", while "Road Train" evokes the best of Motörhead, though the whole album remains faithful to a mighty, elaborate space-rock symphony à la Hawkwind.

Still, the opening notes of "Robot Stop" leave no room for doubt or hesitation: rhythmic and guitar heft take centre stage, reconciling the past ("Evil Death Roll") with the present ("Mr Beat") in a fine multicoloured fresco that confirms the good health of modern psychedelia. The real surprise of the band's latest creation is how it deepens a musical style often considered fickle, through a substantial injection of creativity and an instrumental tour de force of rare effectiveness.

Nonagon Infinity is set to definitively cement the band's name, with a string of tracks that promise fiery, gripping live sets: from the almost dumb-metal of "People – Vulture" to the bluesy irreverence of "Wah Wah", passing through the punk obsessions of "Gamma Knife", before finally landing in the arms of the jazz-lounge of "Invisible Face" — pieces of an unexpected, grandiose suite that definitively kick-starts one of the boldest and most unpredictable outfits on the contemporary scene.

2017 opens with the promise (or threat) from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard to complete as many as five new albums, a challenge the band kicks off with Flying Microtonal Banana. The key to this first project lies in its title: the songs are all composed and performed with microtonal instruments, specially modified to achieve a hollow, estranging sound.

Urgent and engaging in its solid rhythmic and guitar-driven structure, the new King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard album is perhaps the most speculative and self-referential project the Australian band has ever put together — a sonic goof-around that, in the band's capable hands, turns into a solid, mature record.

The Hawkwind-like atmospheres of the opening "Rattlesnake" are the same as those of the previous album Nonagon Infinity, but everything here is deliberately simpler, almost superficial; the other tracks, while more melodic and less obsessive, are at times unsettling.

Stu Mackenzie's band continues to pursue its own vision of psychedelic music, favouring chaos over epic exaltation; their references are often irreverent, burlesque: the Led Zeppelin-style riffs of "Open Water" and the arab-rock touch of "Melting" are only outwardly jovial, as instrumental and vocal detours constantly upend the harmonic identity of both tracks with effects that are eccentric yet captivating.

Consistently hypnotic and engaging, Flying Microtonal Banana offers the band's fans small harmonic gems like "Sleep Drifter" and "Anoxia", both wrapped in delightful ethnic and Middle Eastern references; sandwiched between the two aforementioned tracks, "Billabong Valley" underscores one of the album's few stylistic flaws, namely a certain lack of incisiveness in the vocal parts, which often fail to live up to the record's clever sonic speculations.

In truth, the Australian group's choice to keep exploring new creative avenues leaves them open to a potential regression of their psychedelic rock, and this is one of the reasons why the freakier tone of this latest offspring of the band isn't always convincing: indeed, on "Doom City" the band wearily rehashes the same atmospheres as the opening "Rattlesnake", while "Nuclear Fusion" only stands out for its splendid organ sound.

The microtonal challenge is nonetheless partly won: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard still manage to surprise and disorient with intelligence, without ever taking themselves too seriously, once again capturing the essence of rock'n'roll.

Split into three chapters, the second album of 2017 shamelessly dips into '70s hard rock imagery, warping the material with a lyrical vacuity that symbolizes the anthropic catharsis of our times. Murder Of The Universe is a concept album about the apocalypse of the human race and the dominance of artificial intelligence, the very intelligence that seems to have conceived the album's few, repetitive euphonic ideas.

Incoherent, banal and vacuous like few others, the Australian band's new record is the terminal celebration of the concept-album idea, a psychedelic ride where genre clichés are turned into a sterile, nihilistic groove.

The risk of such a reckless project is falling victim to its own premises, but once again the band puts a more complex sonic material at the disposal of its garage-rock-psych approach, brushing up against the boundaries of rock opera. The ever-present ideological irrationality keeps it from dipping in quality, even if the first segment, "The Tale Of The Altered Beast", shows the first signs of creative fatigue.

The allure of their music still remains dizzying ("Altered Beast 1"): the devastating energy of the acid-scorched guitars in the first part is indeed unsettling, but it serves to introduce ("Life/Death") the deeper pages of the second section, "The Lord Of Lightening Vs. Balrog": a pamphlet rich in metaphor, antonyms, oxymorons and sarcasm.

The echoes of James Alan Gardner's "League Of Peoples" series are evident both in the lyrics and in the explicit use of the character Balrog (itself borrowed by Gardner from Tolkien's work).

Musically, the second section is closer to the fake-pop tomfoolery of Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, with two tracks primed to explode in the band's ever-blazing live shows ("The Floating Fire", "The Acrid Corpse").

Pathos and climax reach their peak in the third section, "Han-Tyumi And The Murder Of The Universe", where the cyborg Han-Tyumi plots to destroy humanity with his lethal vomit. For the occasion, the band sharpens its weapons, staging a more cinematic and visionary sound ("Welcome To An Altered Future"), drawing on some of the group's best songs: the destructive "Digital Black", the anti-ethical "Han-Tyuimi, The Confused Cyborg", the irreverent "Vomit Coffin" and the superb closer, the title track: an orgy of rock and psychedelia with a narrating voice that first lines up the narrative elements, then disintegrates their sequential logic.

Murder Of The Universe is in many ways the most extreme album of their career, a record that, in its apparent lyrical weakness, generates yet another key to interpreting the music of King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, without guaranteeing its actual comprehension — the umpteenth slap and smirk from a band that has yet to produce its masterpiece.

Announced on the band's Facebook page during the hot, sun-drenched days right after Ferragosto, the third album of 2017, Sketches Of Brunswick East, was streamed in full on King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's social media page the day before its digital release, while on eBay a single test-pressing copy was sold for the sum of 3000 dollars, money the band donated to a children's charity.

Shared with Alexander Brettin, better known as Mild High Club, the record unfolds through jazz simplifications (the title is a tribute to Miles Davis's album "Sketches Of Spain"), often bordering on lounge music, with soul and fusion sounds that seemingly depart from the coordinates the Australian band had followed so far. Although the aesthetic is closer to certain sci-fi music or old b-movie soundtracks, the album returns to the soft, floating pages of Paper Mache Dream Balloon, with which it shares a pop form and fragmentation into short episodes, which in this case favor sounds built around wind instruments, double bass and electric piano, leaving guitars and distortion by the wayside.

The pop exoticism of "Countdown", the grand Frank Zappa-style waltz of "Tezeta" and the lounge-perfect folk-jazz of "The Spider And Me" betray the presence of Alexander Brettin and his chill-out-jazz mood, while the Middle-Eastern-tinged pop-rock of "D-Day" (seasoned with a throbbing bassline), the more oblique, shifting rhythm of the suave "The Book" and the more muscular tone of "A Journey To (S)Hell" (which even quotes a famous riff by the Australian band) carry forward the disorienting psychedelic digression the group had already tried out on "Oddments".

The physical release of the album a good two months after its digital release seems, in the end, to offer a different key to interpreting "Sketches Of Brunswick East", as if the band wanted to invite listeners to let the contents of this project settle.

It's hard not to notice that, far from the fanfare of its release, this restless yet relaxed blend of pop, jazz, psychedelia and soul-funk not only sounds even more captivating now, but actually marks the album out as one of the projects destined for more lasting renown.

The fourth chapter of their 2017 output is meanwhile announced by the hypnotic psych-prog of "Crumbling Castle", which since October has kept fans in breathless anticipation of the new album, but what nobody could have predicted was the way Polygondwanaland would actually be released: made available for free, with a scheme that broke new ground compared to similar operations in the past, sharing the master for both the CD and LP formats, complete with high-resolution artwork, and inviting fans to print any format they liked without further permissions or licensing.

After the atonal jollity of Flying Microtonal Banana, the splatter sci-fi of Murder Of The Universe, and the faux-lounge coordinates of Sketches Of Brunswick East, the fourth chapter of the Australian band's annual saga celebrates the triumph of imagination over mediocrity, doing so through the most loved/hated musical language of all, progressive rock, restoring it to its original garage impulses and filtering it through metal evolutions.

The result is a multicoloured jam session that picks up psychedelia by the tail and shakes it until it creates splendid hybrids with the space-rock of Hawkwind on "Inner Cell", or with desert-blues filtered through kraut-rock on the dazzling "Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet", leaving out the perfectionist, acoustically well-mannered obsessions that made the fortune of many psych-rock outfits while also sealing their creative stagnation.

The audience's involvement in the physical production of Polygondwanaland carries a very strong symbolic value for King Gizzard: it becomes the catalyst of the relationship between musician and audience, and it's therefore no surprise that such a devoted fanbase forgives, once again, the slight gaps and repetitiveness that surface here and there without ever disturbing the overall effect.

And so the gentle nods go by: the Pink Floyd of the The Dark Side Of The Moon era on "Loyalty", the King Crimson-like percussive weave of the title track, the Gentle Giant geometries of "Horology", all the way to the Incredible String Band-style progressive folk celebrated on "Searching...", ultimately handing the Australian band's audience the most deliberately referential album of their career.

Polygondwanaland is a saga steeped in trip-psych, a sampler of suggestions whose familiarity never tips into boredom or over-saturation; the band's skill in handling such complex and treacherous material shines even brighter on gems like "The Castle In The Air", the aforementioned "Crumbling Castle" and the closing "The Fourth Colour", all of which bear the hallmarks of instant classics, blessed with an instrumental density reminiscent of Yes and Emerson Lake & Palmer without sharing their pomposity and grandiloquence — if anything, letting technique and instinct run along a single creative track that rarely indulges in self-satisfaction.

On the flip side, this is also the album where the surprise factor counts for less, and even the guiding thread feels less convincing than the premises that spawned the three previous chapters, yet it still stands as one of the most cohesive and enjoyable records in their already remarkable output.

While the champagne flowed freely to toast the end of 2017, the Australians finally delivered on their project by releasing their fifth album of the year, presented by the band itself as a dissonant batch of material set aside — for thematic, not qualitative, reasons — from the other four 2017 projects.

Gumboot Soup is yet another proof of the band's creative grace, even though its eleven tracks add nothing new to what Mackenzie and co. had already said up to that point.

The key element here is heterogeneity regardless, a source of surprise and wonder but also of emotional frustration.

The band follows no aesthetic or stylistic rulebook, even as it embraces the logic of psychedelia; seen in this light, the omnivorous character of Gumboot Soup ends up being the perfect exegesis of the premises that made King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard one of the most beloved bands in modern musical subculture.

The album's eleven tracks indeed grab the attention of both the old-school vinyl collector anchored to a precise genre identity (psychedelia) and the modern, genre-fluid generation raised on downloads and streaming.

In some respects, the fifth chapter of the "5 albums in one year" project is potentially also the most interesting and complete, not because it manages to reach the hypnotic, lysergic heights of Polygonwandaland or the disorienting tones of Flying Microtonal Banana — even its outgoing mood doesn't quite capture the magic of Sketches Of Brunswick East or the militant, nihilistic tone of Murder Of The Universe.

The strategic little tricks that keep torpor at bay — the fleeting simplicity of "Superposition", the funky-disco rhythm of "Down The Sink", the none-too-authoritative freak-outs of "Greenhouse Heat Death" and "All I Know", and the lyrical fragility of alien pop songs like "Barefoot Desert" and "Beginner's Luck" — don't revolutionise King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's songbook, but the stimulating play of references and nods is yet another statement of the band's coherent incoherence: an oxymoron that, so far, has only borne good fruit.

Two years on from that tasty binge comes the Australians' new album, titled Fishing For Fishies, for the first time subjected to long, painstaking reworking during production, with 17 blues-rock-and-harmonica jam sessions deconstructed and treated with electronics, overdubs, keyboards and plenty of imagination.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard distill the evolution of rock through a boogie-woogie and blues excursion, starting from the 70s rock guts of "Boogieman Sam", mixing in soul and glam over the festive 80s groove of "Plastic Boogie", right up to their own personal stylistic take on it in the proto-futurist "Cyboogie".

This gentle temporal shift lays the groundwork for the potential strengths and weaknesses of Fishing For Fishies: the band chooses to keep a steady 4/4 throughout the album, creating an alienating effect for anyone hoping for a more ambitious and energetic record.

The title track is the poppiest and seemingly most trivial and irritating song the band has ever written, but with each listen, beyond revealing a solid harmonic structure, it unveils the playful, mocking intent behind yet another of the Australians' clever bits of tomfoolery.

The more skeptical will be charmed by the jazz-swing surrealism of "The Bird Song", the die-hards nostalgic for the band's old unhinged fury will throw themselves headlong into the pop-rock trick of "Real's Not Real", while those left disappointed and searching for a shred of the old, deranged psychedelia will have no choice but to jump straight to the more typical "Acarine".

Fishing For Fishies isn't an album in the classic sense of the word — then again, no King Gizzard record is — nor do its lyrics, championing nature and environmental protection, make it one.

Fishing For Fishies doesn't aim to be the smartest or most ambitious of their albums, just the slyest: the band has cast the hook, and once again, it's a pleasure to bite.

In a daring leap, preceded by what many branded the worst single the Australian band ever released, "Organ Farmer", Stu Mackenzie goes from boogie-woogie/blues to thrash metal in the space of a few months. Infest The Rats' Nest marks the first time the lineup is pared down to just three members (Joey Walker, Michael Cavaghan and, of course, Stu Mackenzie), with the music veering toward sounds familiar to fans of Slayer, Metallica or Motorhead, to the point of turning the psych-rock ensemble into a virtual cover band.

To be fair, it's a project that does the band's stock no small favour, powered by a thrash-metal language that leaves you decidedly breathless, thanks to an unrelenting stream of riffs in industrial quantities, fast rhythmic tempos, and a guttural vocal delivery that sets the tone for the whole album. It isn't the long-awaited masterpiece, but the thirty-five minutes of the Australian band's fifteenth offspring, while showing a slight dip in inspiration, still prove invigorating.

King Gizzard partly return to the themes of Murder Of The Universe (and, in part, also Nonagon Infinity), with the same strengths and weaknesses, the only difference being that while the old concept album has gradually lost its appeal, this new chapter risks being hailed as one of their finest albums ever.

Focusing the analysis purely on the musical content, it's worth noting that the riff-fest and rhythmic bluntness of "Self-Immolate" earns its place within the project's apocalyptic/cathartic sequence, which can't be said for "Organ Farmer" or the superfluous "Venusian 2". It's left to the Metallica-esque cascade of hard sounds in "Planet B" to kick things off with vigour, building a sonic tension that only the stoner-psych digressions of "Superbug" manage to hold in check.

The rest is highly flammable material — wool, cotton or plastic, it hardly matters — at times the sonic fabric turns smoky ("Venusian 1"), in a few rare cases so elaborate and dense that it's hard to see past it (the brazen "Mars For the Rich"), yet it's consistently bright and dazzling ("Hell").

Moved by the devastation of Australia's forests caused by one of the most severe catastrophes in recent years, the band released three live recordings in early 2020 to raise funds to help offset the damage from the wildfires.

And so it's the right moment for the band to put out a film/record project: Chunky Shrapnel is in fact a story to be taken in on two fronts, the purely sonic one and the visual one, serving as the soundtrack to the documentary film directed by John Angus Stewart (already responsible for many of the band's videos), which brings together various performances captured during the 2019 European tour.

Describing the band's live album — a band that, more than most, has made life on the road its true point of appeal and appreciation — is no simple task, since King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's music is by nature prone to provocation and creative situationism; nevertheless, Chunky Shrapnel has a well-defined structural logic of its own, focusing attention on the maturity the band has reached.

There are plenty of moments to appreciate the quality of the live versions, starting with a fine reworking of "The River" that reinforces the comparison with the live band par excellence, namely the Grateful Dead, thanks to an excellent central guitar backbone.

Episodes like “Let Me Mend The Past” and “Wah Wah” skilfully stay within the lines, but the version of “Road Train” (taken from the remarkable Nonagon Infinity) is a burst of pure energy capable of moving even stones, and it stands in perfect contrast with the splendid electronic digression of “Anamnesis”, one of three unreleased instrumental tracks that serve as connective tissue for the sequence of the album/film.

There are also two extracts from the Milan show, but they're undoubtedly the weakest in terms of both recording quality and performance; worthy of special mention instead are the version of “Parking” recorded in Brussels, graced by an extraordinary drum solo, and the one of “Murder Of The Universe” taken from the Utrecht concert, so full-bodied and solid that it ends up being even more compelling than the original. 

Choosing the tracks meant to represent King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's live power was no easy task; some will lament the absence of episodes from Fishing For Fishies, Gumboot Soup and I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, especially given the nearly twenty minutes devoted to “A Brief History Of Planet Earth”, assembled from no fewer than four different performances (London, Berlin, Utrecht and Barcelona), starting from the opening notes of “Rattlesnake” before unspooling into a long jam session — but it's precisely in this wild, atypical narrative form that the essence lies of one of the few bands destined to go down in the history of contemporary rock.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite Sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and the latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

Share on