I can think of absolutely no comparison point for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. They are a one of one. The Australian psych-rockers crank out an unholy amount of music, and they freely switch genres and moods from album to album. If you're a devoted King Gizzard fan, then you must not have much time in your life for basically any other music at all. Nevertheless, they seem to get bigger and bigger with each new release, and all those albums are pretty good! Their undiminished creative flow is really something to witness, especially as it leads them to a freaky-ass experiment like their new orchestral album Phantom Island.
It's been nearly a year since King Gizzard released their last album Flight b741, an eternity for this band. After meeting members of the LA Philharmonic who convinced them to play around with symphonic sounds, they reached out to British conductor and arranger Chad Kelly, who helped them flesh out some unfinished songs they had left over from Flight b741. Those recordings turned into a whole new album, which turned into an orchestral tour. We've posted the early singles "Phantom Island," "Deadstick," and "Grow Wings And Fly," and the full album is out today. I have to say: I am charmed.
With Phantom Island, King Gizzard avoid the clichéd bombast that most rock bands lean on when they bring in strings. Instead, Phantom Island is them in total choogle-mode, and all the strings and horns seem to be playing around with them, ornamenting the grooves and filling in the spaced. It works as a kind of thought-experiment -- the collaborative late-'60s Grateful Dead/Burt Bacharach album that never could've happened. Some of these songs would work just fine without all the frippery, but the frippery adds to the daffy excess of the entire project. You have to have a certain tolerance for playful melodies to get into this one, but if you're in the right mood, it makes for weirdly euphoric summer music. As a listener, I instinctively resist this kind of whimsy, but I have no choice but to give in here. Stream it below.
Phantom Island is out now on p(doom).
