Album Review: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Flight b741

Flight b741 sees prolific Aussie outfit King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard ditch the hermeneutics of their conceptually weighty recent offerings (Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava was a suite of seven pieces, each following a classical Greek musical mode, for example).

As the howlin’ harmonica rises from the rubble on opener ‘Mirage City’, it’s clear that this is one of their more fun outings. An astonishing 26th studio LP, KGLW’s peripatetic sound is rooted in '70s Southern-tinged rock this time around, evoking Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and The Rolling Stones’ more country-tinged offerings. They regularly veer into Grateful Dead-style jams too, with plenty of fine guitar playing to enjoy on songs like the Chickin Pickin’d ‘Hog Calling Contest’.

There’s humour running through the 10 tracks which is distinctly King Gizz, witness ‘Field Of Vision’, with its glam call and response choruses, a head-thumping beat and outro chants of “I’m being a silly billy.” Those words could sum up the band’s approach here. The six-piece reportedly got together, cranked some cheap amps to ‘11’ and hit ‘record’, passing around instruments and mics like joints at a Ziggy Marley gig. While there’s certainly a carefree charm to it, the record’s busier moments are guilty of becoming messy walls of homogenised noise.

Not the inimitable group’s most polished or boundary-pushing effort, it nonetheless reaffirms that KGLW are a band that can (and at this rate probably will) do it all.

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