Optimism in this day and age is rare, but even rarer is a band willing to push as many sonic boundaries as King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard. This album appears to channel the experimental funkiness of George Clinton’s Funkadelic in a new, jazzier direction of 21st-century optimism. But fear not this won’t affect you unless you plan on reaching your 1.29 millionth birthday. The ominous, deadly song takes its name from the (relatively) local star that scientists predict could spell disaster and demise for our solar system. The album is brought to a close with ‘Gliese 710’, which beckons a darker turn of events. Perhaps the album’s funkiest number, a shimmering, effect-laden guitar, gathers more hooks than a Peter Pan convention as the busy arrangement flows in-between grounding vocal breaks. ‘Lava’ is certainly the album’s most beautiful track with its saccharine introduction and transition to a celestial piano-driven vocal section that builds intensity towards the conclusion.įollowing the album’s 13-and-a-half-minute epic, ‘Hell’s Itch’, we enter another personal highlight, ‘Iron Lung’. This is incredibly fitting, given that scientists rename magma as lava once it’s successfully breached the Earth’s surface. As we venture ‘Magma’ and its volcanic twin, ‘Lava’, we’re greeted with the album’s epicentre and very possibly its pinnacle in the latter. The next three tracks represent the album’s warmth. With funky jazz excursions and laid-back guitar solos lain like a cherry on top, this track is the epitome of “cool”. The song comes with a more present bassline and rapped verses with an edginess reminiscent of a jagged iceberg. Beginning with the floating tropical jazz of ‘Mycelium’, the psychedelic notion is played out in the setting of a jazz bar on a carefree Hawaiian beach, piña colada in hand. Indeed, this collection of tracks will have you visualising the sounds as you escape into a world of organic creation only a band like King Gizzard could muster up.Ī mixture of seven colours greets us in a loose concept collective which aims to sonically represent the subjects laid out in the titles. So, as we crack open this fresh tin of paint, what do we see? If you’re thinking, perhaps I’ve lost my marbles, consumed a psychedelic drug, or even put my nose too close to some particularly volatile paint, you likely haven’t listened to the album yet. This isn’t, of course, to say that these Aussies have ever been a band to conform to any vested expectation. With the album’s shortest song, ‘Lava’, clocking up just over six-and-a-half minutes and with an average track time north of nine minutes, Gizzard are raising a firm middle finger to the mainstream radio, something I admire deeply. Apart from this connection, the words are connected as physical objects of nature and set the president for the album’s seven progressive and fascinating compositions. “I’m not sure if many people will notice that,” says Mackenzie, “But any musical dorks will get it”. The title’s initials, IDPLMAL, offer a handy new mnemonic for memorising the seven modes of the major scale.
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