King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard : FLIGHT b741
I don’t know what I was expecting from the new album by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. To be especially clear, I am not just a random fan or writer covering this album: I wrote our Beginner’s Guide to the band after many, many conversations with our editor-in-chief about this arguably too-prolific band and deliberately shoehorned in as much ancillary information about approaching the rest of their ginormous catalog as a freebie. So, in retrospect, I should have seen a genre jump coming from a mile away. But: country-rock? I will admit it took me aback.
From the sounds of lead single “Le Risque,” I had assumed the record would be a Steely Dan-adjacent jazz-rock record, something they’ve teased at in the past but never fully indulged in; when “Hog Calling Contest” was released and sounded more like Little Feat than Michael McDonald I began to sweat. I like country-rock, of course; you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can hang with early rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelic rock and ’70s hard rock and not appreciate that stuff. But… I don’t know. I knew to expect the unexpected but, somehow, this was absolutely not it.
This level of confoundment I think can underscore an element of not just this record but the group in general: shifts of this size, even when pulled off as capably as they are here (you would never guess this was the first record of its style from the group) can be deeply jarring, acting as an artificial barrier between you and the music that nonetheless exists. The fruits beyond it were typically solid; it would be shocking if the current run of the group contained a record that was truly awful. That said, it didn’t feel precisely worth the effort to crack through the psychic wall. This is solid work, a great genre exercise for sure, and showcases a specific kind of looseness that most groups who learn to jam through the psych world never really get a firm grasp on. The band comprises extremely good players who seem almost telepathic these days, especially as evidenced on their recent fucking gargantuan live boxset Live at Red Rocks, and certainly needed a blow-off from the heavily conceptual work of their past six LPs. So, in that light, a tight and well-executed set of country rockers makes perfect sense.
It’s just hard not to feel that it’s a bit, well, slight. I’m of two minds regarding the fairness of this position. On one hand, after what in my eyes is their best album so far in The Silver Cord and them clearly needing a little mental break, what could possibly not have felt like a let down and, more pressingly, is that fair? But on the other, these songs do feel suspiciously one-note in that regard, being solid and almost certainly a hoot in a live setting but feeling maybe a little too like a throwback currently. Is it “safe” to put out music in a genre that hasn’t been commercially viable in over 40 years? Especially when it jars so heavily with your typical milieu? I appreciate that the group always gives me toothsome questions that feed the curiosity of the part of my mind that sincerely adores criticism, theory, and mapping the complex manifolds of these non-physical objects. The issue, in this case, is it is appended to a record that, like Changes most recently from the crew, is merely good as opposed to their now-standard great set. Granted, this is the Prince problem all over again; there’s no way to be this prolific and this wide-ranging without some not-quite excelling the way others do. It’s not a bad problem to have.
Label: p(doom)
Year: 2024
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