King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard pitchfork

The psych rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard chose to release its fourth album of the year—with a fifth supposedly en route—as a free digital download, encouraging fans to create as many copies as they please. “Make tapes, make CD’s, make records,” reads a note accompanying the album’s release. “Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy.” Whether they're trying to scale back record expenses, or it’s an altruistic transfer of power to fans, King Gizzard’s decision to surrender control over this album’s physical reach is a comical one. Polygondwanaland is the farthest the seven-piece has strayed from their usual psych sci-fi roots. The band still employ lyrical nerdiness and wigged-out guitar in the album, but whereas King Gizzard’s last records got knee deep in prog rock, Polygondwanaland slinks into those waters until it’s waist high and loses the usual gnarly riffs.

Like its mouthful of a title, Polygondwanaland delivers a 10-course meal without dividers between its dishes. Songs seep into one another for an immersive listen. The stirring, quiet percussion of “Inner Cell” tiptoes into “Loyalty” for a slow buildup, before it splashes into the punctuated vocals of “Horology,” a sea of guitar tapping and rich, warm woodwinds. As usual, transitions are key in King Gizzard’s work, but they add a smoothness to Polygondwanaland that makes it particularly digestible, so that every vocal sigh and gaudy synth acts as a complementary flavor.

Like the euphoric peaks of 1970s-era Yes or the melodic sections of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s discography, a solid first impression and a memorable farewell make these type of dense records impactful. King Gizzard put the majority of their stock in this. Polygondwanaland opens with 10 minutes of painstakingly recorded instrumentation on “Crumbling Castle.” Syncopated drumming and clean guitar scales part ways for bandleader Stu Mackenzie and his gentle voice. The song’s vague rumination on sickness and fragility parallels the instruments gently blowing behind him: backing guitars harmonize with one another, a flute solo fades in, and barely-discernable keyboards whirr in the distance. Then, in the song’s final minute, the band trades that for a wall of stoner-metal sludge. Closing track “The Fourth Colour” opts for the same dazzling effect. After endless, bright guitar trills and a rhythmic drone, a risible drum fill prompts the band to wreak havoc in the song's final minute, exploding with the psych rock frenzy of Flying Microtonal Banana or I’m in Your Mind Fuzz.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s prolific album release schedule is set to continue. Their double album Omnium Gatherum, is out April 22 via their label KGLW. Find the new 18-minute single, “The Dripping Tap,” as well as “Magenta Mountain,” below.

Originally planned as a collection of unreleased songs, Omnium Gatherum became a project where the full band recorded new music. “This recording session felt significant,” Stu Mackenzie said in a statement. “Significant because it was the first time all six Gizzards had gotten together after an extraordinarily long time in lockdown. Significant because it produced the longest studio recording we’ve ever released. Significant because (I think) it’s going to change the way we write and record music—at least for a while…. A turning point. A touchstone. I think we’re entering into our ‘jammy period.’ It feels good.”

The new album follows Butterfly 3000, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s second album of 2021 after L.W. They followed those with the remix album Butterfly 3001, which included a DJ Shadow remix. The band has an extensive tour lined up later this year.

Omnium Gatherum:

01 The Dripping Tap
02 Magenta Mountain
03 Kepler-22b
04 Gaia
05 Ambergris
06 Sadie Sorceress
07 Evilest Man
08 The Garden Goblin
09 Blame It on the Weather
10 Persistence
11 The Grim Reaper
12 Presumptuous
13 Predator X
14 Red Smoke
15 Candles
16 The Funeral

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King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: World Tour 2022

This article was originally published on Tuesday, March 8 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. It was last updated on Tuesday, March 29 at 1:44 p.m. Eastern.

If anyone had reason to celebrate this past New Year’s Eve, it was King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. On December 31, the Australian psych-rock collective finally fulfilled their long-standing promise to release five new albums in 2017, surreptitiously making Gumboot Soup available on their Bandcamp page hours before the year came to a close. Whether they were scrambling to make the deadline or were just withholding the new record until the last possible moment for dramatic effect, the photo finish felt just right for a wildly unpredictable band that always seems to be flying by the seat of its cut-off shorts, yet always manages to get the job done. The remarkable thing about King Gizzard’s 2017 isn’t just that they managed to release five records—it’s that not a moment of them felt half-assed. They didn’t cook the books by dropping a 30-minute improv jam or cobbling together a bunch of acoustic song sketches and calling it an album. Whether it was released by a big label like ATO, a small Aussie indie like Flightless, or, well, you, each of their 2017 releases is an elaborately constructed, carefully considered statement that opened up new universes for the band to explore.

A title like Gumboot Soup might suggest a sloppy collection of leftovers, but the record features some of the most delicately rendered songs ever released by this bull-in-a-china-shop band. In it, you’ll hear echoes of the band’s other 2017 releases—the ominous eco-conscious parables of Flying Microtonal Banana, the over-the-top motorik metal of Murder of the Universe, the jazzy looseness of Sketches of Brunswick East, the pastoral prog of Polygondwanaland. But there’s an emphasis on pop craftsmanship and concision here that greatly distinguishes it from its immediate predecessors (not to mention a gesture toward late-’70s Bowie-esque art-funk, via “Down the Sink,” that constitutes another new look for this stylistically promiscuous group).

Where the vocals in a given King Gizzard song tend to mimic the pattern of the main guitar riff or underlying rhythm (often encouraging mantric repetition), here, the arrangements rally around the melodies. Keyboardist Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s atypically relaxed voice leads the way on the gently swinging cocktail-lounge pop of “The Last Oasis,” gradually submerging the song in a blissful, aquatic whirl. And the dreamy, psychedelic soft-rock of “Beginner’s Luck” is so enchanting, you could be forgiven for thinking its scenes of high-stakes casino gambling constituted a celebration of excess, rather than a cautionary allegory for unchecked greed. (The spastic, squawking guitar solo that overtakes the song in its final minute brings the band’s subversive intent to the fore.)

What genre is Polygondwanaland?

Is Omnium Gatherum a concept album?

What genre is gumboot soup?

What genre is fishies fishing?