Let’s take a look back at the band’s discography.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are what The Grateful Dead were in the ’60s – outrageously motivated, lyrically inspired and almost reckless in their musical wanderings. The Grateful Dead didn’t give a fuck as they released 18 studio albums in 14 years. The public criticism was poised, yet they were silenced, as the music preceded any means for censure.
For 30 years, the Californian space-mongers uncapped the unrestrained potential of previously thought one-dimensional genres. The capability of psychedelic blues was untaught, but for The Grateful Dead, it was a reflex, and people followed. Fifty years on and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are carrying the legacy with their eyes open not shut. They show no fear, which can be a lesson to all budding musicians – give it a crack, who gives a fuck what comes back.
So here we stand, 15 albums in and ten years down. As we celebrate what’s been a joyous ride at Nowhere Special, it’s time to open up the archives and see how Eyes Like The Sky, 12 Bar Bruise and the rest stack up, cos it’s only just.
15. Fishing for Fishies (2019)
After taking 2018 off from releasing a record, King Gizzard were a bit slow to get out of the blocks in 2019, releasing the laborious canter, Fishing for Fishies. It was the first of two albums that year and saw the band adorn a blues-infused sound that could’ve seen them set up their kit on Cable Beach and strum away to some sun-struck passersby. It’s fun and bubbly, but far from testing.
14. Infest the Rats’ Nest (2019)
King Gizzard’s most recent studio album, Infest the Rats’ Nest, is the band’s heaviest. A full throttle metal assault that leaves listeners battered and bruised at its closure, the nine-track release continues the band’s quest to inform the masses of our inevitable doom. While profound in its messaging, the thrash and bash becomes tiring. Infest the Rats’ Nest is adventurous but certainly not one for the psych rock purists.
13. Oddments (2014)
What a rollercoaster we have here. Oddments is like a seven-year-old youngling amidst a raspberry cordial high – every time you try and grab it, it wiggles away and jumps on the trampoline – “It’s time for dinner, Danny!” There are plenty of genre investments here – surf rock on ‘Hot Wax’, acid rock on ‘Sleepwalker’, even folk on ‘Homeless Man in Adidas’. This is ambitious but cramped.
12. 12 Bar Bruise (2012)
12 Bar Bruise is a scrapheap in a good way. It conveys a burgeoning Anglesea-through-Deniliquin eight-piece rife with enthusiasm but at their most musically grated. It’s so Oh Sees it’s not funny and would see King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard establish their basis in psychedelic rock. Look deeper and it was more foreshadowing than first thought – ‘Sam Cherry’s Last Shot’ uncovering an investment in spoken word we’ve seen carry the test of time.
11. Eyes Like the Sky (2013)
Scour the deepest depths of the Sonoran Desert and you’ll trample upon Eyes Like the Sky – the most ambitious and undervalued early album from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. The voice of The Dingoes’ Broderick Smith, father of band multi-instrumentalist Ambrose Kenny-Smith, re-emerges in cadent sight. It’s an audiobook, plain and simple, but it’s not simple, it’s verbosely erudite, marrying laconic punk backing with alluring narration.
10. Quarters (2015)
If you asked The Grateful Dead whether it would be a good idea to curate four songs, each ten minutes and ten seconds long, Jerry Garcia would probably light you a blunt and channel the chorus of Kumbaya at your side – it’s time for celebration. This was fucking fantastic, mosey down the Murrumbidgee with wind at your face in ‘The River’ and bop up and down to the radio-friendly, ‘God Is In The Rhythm’.
9. Sketches of Brunswick East (2017)
Sketches of Brunswick East was always destined for criticism because of their heavens-reaching pedestal. To go from their most conceptual album to a draft could be seen as a fall from grace, but it was exactly what Stu Mackenzie ordered. While many of the tracks on Sketches feel unfinished, I can’t help but admire it as part of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s design. From the psych-jazz of ‘The Book’ to the flute-driven ‘Tezeta’, album 11 has it’s stretches.
8. Polygondwanaland (2017)
Album four in the five-layer psych sandwich Gizz delivered in 2017 saw us explore the planet successor to Pluto, Polygondwanaland. This is a place like you’ve never seen before and its musical soundtrack is equally idiosyncratic. Across the album, we get a sense that this seven-piece are a bit sick of standard rhythms so they throw minimalism out the window and replace it with polyrhythms that are designed to be off-beat. It’s fun and the next evolution for the Indiana Jones’ of music.
7. Flying Microtonal Banana (2017)
Flying Microtonal Banana is like its namesake dessert, the banana split – colourful, sweet with a hidden crunch from the walnut vestiges. Their most single-friendly album boasts tracks that’ll stand the test of time as being uniquely synonymous. ‘Rattlesnake’ is the band’s most polarising track as it sees them touch the mainstream surface but ‘Nuclear Fusion’ is the Robin to the Batman, picking up where “rattle, rattle, rattle” falls down. Interesting to see where this one stacks up in fifty years.
6. Gumboot Soup (2017)
You could’ve expected King Gizzard’s last of five 2017 albums to sound rushed but Gumboot Soup arrived as a wonderfully varied culmination of the four 2017 albums that preceded it. The opener ‘Beginner’s Luck’ draws whimsically from the jazzy Sketches of Brunswick East and sophomore piece ‘Greenhouse Heat Death’ is like an offcut from Murder of the Universe. Then there’s the microtonal-leaning ‘All Is Known’, while the inspirations of Polygondwanaland flutter in and out of the 11-track release. Not bad.
5. Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013)
Away from the futurism of King Gizzard’s most recent releases, Float Along – Fill Your Lungs takes us back home. An archetype of the band’s music roots, it’s pure psychedelia and floods us back to the ‘60s guitar lines and fuzzy Electro-Voice vocal effects that defined their beginning. ‘Head On/Pill’ is the band’s most riotous live track – at 16 minutes in length, the bandroom floor is a river of sweat at its last riff. Shame it doesn’t get played much these days.
4. Paper Mache Dream Balloon (2015)
You could pin a metaphorical narrative to every track on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s seventh album, Paper Mache Dream Balloon. Running away from the police like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive? You’ve got ‘Trapdoor’. Chilling by the pool in the Bahamas? There’s ‘Sense’. You were thinking of Play School? Sit alongside Jay Laga’aia in ‘Bone’. It’s an album you’ll never get bored off – it’s timeless and will be played for decades to come. It also marked King Gizzard’s most musically ambitious deviation upon its release.
3. I’m In Your Mind Fuzz (2014)
When punters heard ‘Am I In Heaven?’ and ‘Hot Water’ shudder back into King Gizzard setlists, before they had time to hug their friend next door, they were losing themselves on the d-floor like it was 1985. It was only the snippet of a medley but that was enough to reignite longings for their stellar 2014 capsule, I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. This album uncovered the band’s first interest in looping – ‘I’m In Your Mind’, ‘I’m Not In Your Mind’, ‘Cellophane’ and ‘I’m In Your Mind Fuzz’ melding into one another. Had to go near the top.
2. Murder of the Universe (2017)
It’s gory, gruesome, extra-terrestrial but so immersive. It mirrors life in 2017 to a tee where freedom can be taken away at a whim but it’s so intricate. Like an irreverent sequel to Eyes Like the Sky, Murder of the Universe is the sludge to the sand. While the narrative takes precedence on this release, the motorik momentum is compelling enough to make you lose consciousness of the spoken passages.
1. Nonagon Infinity (2016)
The infinite loop that came upon us in 2016 is the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard prototype, coalescing the entire King Gizz identity into one piece. Nonagon Infinity facilitates a purpose for the repeat function on listening devices for the first time and for the first time, there’s no crap. It’s the only King Gizzard release that doesn’t miss the mark from start to finish, not to say that the preceding albums fell short at all. This one just hits the spot for the entire journey. From ‘Robot Stop’ to ‘Road Train’ and back, you want to stay on the carriage and never get off. A true psychedelic garage precious.
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