Channelling garage bands, Little Feat and more, the prolific Aussies pair nihilistic lyrics with 70s-style riffs in a darkly enjoyable romp
. This band of shaggy-haired Australian larrikins release records at such a furious clip – 25 in just over 10 years, and that’s before you even address the hatful of live albums they’ve dropped on Bandcamp in that time – that most casual listeners would be forgiven for not venturing in at all. Those albums are often concept-driven in a way that can be intimidating to those without any technical musical knowledge or any interest in taking a massive bong rip before hitting play .
But don’t underestimate the Gizz, or the Wizz, or the Lizz, or however you want to shorten it. They’re fine pop songwriters – check 2015’s Paper Mâché Dream Balloon if gentle, bossa nova-inflected folk is your thing – and fastidious producers, expanding their garage sound to encompass funk, jazz and dance music.
The band’s latest record, Flight b741, is being framed as back-to-basics: “King Gizzard’s most accessible and fun album,” heralds a PR email, perhaps in an attempt to win back critics exhausted by the group’s prolific output. But that belies the fact that Stu Mackenzie and co have become more sophisticated, complicated songwriters over the past 10 years, without sacrificing their sense of irreverence.
King Gizzard aren’t slavish in their re-creation of 70s rock, which is a good thing. Raw Feel, an early highlight, captures the cram-in-the-van-and-sing-along vibe of the era’s hooks, but it’s also extremely fast and, for all its technical wizardry, has a garage rock feel that harks further back to the 1960s .
Flight b741 is a striking combination of form and emotion from a band where the former has often been scrutinised by critics at the expense of the latter. It’s not the band’s most successful foray into quote-unquote serious music – for my money, that would be 2022’s Omnium Gatherum, a sweeping genre-mash that boasts both the band’s most lush production and most trenchant lyricism – but it does show they can mature without trading in what’s made them such a hugely loved band.
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