By Eamon Raftery-Sweeney | Staff Writer
Australian neo-psych rock group King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is one of my personal favorite bands of the past decade. Their unique, ambitious, experimental sound makes them one of the most unpredictable and wild bands active today. Despite their relatively short 9 years together, the band has already produced 16 full-length albums. The group reached new heights in 2017, with an absurdly ambitious 5 albums in one year, each with its own concept and sound. One of these albums, Flying Microtonal Banana, happens to be my favorite King Gizzard album of all time. The explorations into non-Western tunings and song structure makes it a unique experience, one that this new album, K.G., intends to replicate. With the release of each subsequent promotional single, it became clear to me that this new album would be a sequel to Banana, and my expectations shot through the roof. Could they recapture the magic?
Unfortunately, no. There hasn’t been much progression from their last microtonal album, leaving me with a disappointing sense of deja vu. Still, there are plenty of good tunes all throughout this album.
The album gets off to somewhat of a rough start. After a nice intro track, the album starts off with “Automation”, which is a song that perhaps most embodies my issues with this album. While I do find the song catchy and fun, it sounds almost exactly like a few different songs off of Banana. The lack of progression really irks me. I have a similar problem with the following song, “Minimum Brain Size”, albeit to a lesser extent. The evolution of the microtonal sound is much clearer here, with woozy production and a nice guitar and bass line. From there, the album switches to acoustic instruments with “Straws In The Wind”. This was one of the promotional singles for the album, and is probably the weakest song on the album. While I like the strange choice of instruments and tunings, the song feels somewhat stuck in first gear, never really going anywhere interesting. It lands with a thud for me.
Thankfully, the album starts to pick up with the active and groovy “Ontology”, a song with some kind of plucked instrument laying down the melody. The song eventually breaks down into a blistering microtonal guitar solo, which then transitions nicely into the following song, “Intrasport”, a true standout among the tracklist. It’s an electronic banger with wild disco strings and a thumping synth bass beat, along with a strange microtonal guitar passage. It’s not the first time the band has experimented with electronica, but it’s certainly one of the more memorable times. For my money, this is one of the weirdest King Gizzard songs ever, and I sincerely hope they continue to explore this avenue in the future. The album then slides into “Oddlife”, a decent ballad about life on the road, and then into the song “Honey”, a sweet love song with an excellent chorus and joyful acoustic guitar and bass lines. It is clearly the best song on the album, and one of the better songs that King Gizzard has ever released. Despite how mellow it is, it easily outshines the thunderous closer, “The Hungry Wolf of Fate”, a middling Black Sabbath-influenced song which ends rather abruptly. The album does not stick the landing.
While there are some great songs here, K.G. is still an overall middling release for King Gizzard. The tracklist is a mixed bag, and the entire album lacks any real progress from their earlier work, Flying Microtonal Banana. It may entertain a fan like me, but if you’re just getting into King Gizzard, I’d look elsewhere.
6/10
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