Album Review: Gumboot Soup, KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD

It feels somewhat redundant to be reviewing Gumboot Soup now, as it’s been out on digital release for three months. It slipped under the door on the last day of 2017 in order to fulfill King Gizzard’s five-albums-in-a-year mission statement. This serves as a heads-up for the forthcoming vinyl release. With titles like ‘Greenhouse Heat Death’, ‘Barefoot Desert’, ‘The Last Oasis’ and ‘Muddy Water’ we have, on the face of it, a save-the-planet or were all doomed manifesto. And it’s all couched in mellifluous space-jazz (ugh, how it pained me to type that!) stylings. For the most part, with a couple of notable exceptions, King Gizzard explore a gentler pastoral side to their oeuvre on Gumboot Soup. Opener ‘Beginner’s Luck’ is practically a pop song – albeit one that might have been released in the late ‘60s. It’s the sort of soft-rock exemplified by The Zombies’ Odessey And Oracle. Which is a good thing, obviously. The soothing air of relaxation is further fortified by the sonorously vibrating flutes’n’ whalesong ambience of ‘Superposition’ and – with a tip of the cap to Lennon & McCartney’s ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ – the lethargic somnolence of ‘I’m Sleepin’ In’. Well deserved I’m sure after their busy year. Just to prove the rule, however, we have the 13th Floor Elevators-meets-Jefferson Airplane raga-chug of ‘Greenhouse Heat Death’, and an apocalyptic march-of-the-howling-undead in ‘The Great Chain Of Being’. Barring the vinyl, KGATLW haven’t released anything this year. But of course, there’s still time for a half-dozen albums and a couple of rock-operas if they get their fingers out. OUT MAY 4

Rating: 7/10