King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Phantom Island

Australia Broadcast Center

5 hours ago

From Deep Purple and Metallica to KISS and even Sigur Rós, bands tapping orchestras for some added class is nothing new, and often to mixed results.
But trust King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, arguably Australia's wildest and most prolific band, to put their unique spin on what is sometimes dismissed as bombastic cliché.
Phantom Island is the group's 27th album in 13 years, (You do the maths!) What's more remarkable than the pace at which this six-headed beast pumps out new music is that the quality has rarely dipped with each release.
Having restlessly switched through genre gears — power metal, psych jazz, microtonality, electronic pop, boogie rock, spoken-word Spaghetti Western — this time, King Gizz add symphonic strings, horns and woodwinds to their freewheeling mix of trippy riffs and jam-band glam.
The spark for Phantom Island came from meeting members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on tour, leading to the band enlisting British conductor Chad Kelly. He added orchestral arrangements to 10 unfinished songs written and recorded alongside last year's bluesy, unruly Flight b741 .
The resulting material is unlike any in the band's far-reaching discography, and has ballooned into a homecoming December tour of both rock and orchestral shows, where Kelly conducts a 29-piece ensemble.
After the grandiosity of the opening title track, there's plenty of special moments that rely less on orchestral heft and more on unique fusions.
The brass punching up the '70s choogle of 'Deadstick'; the eerie strings bookending 'Lonely Cosmos'. Lush flutes and acoustic interludes augmenting the Southern-fried twang of 'Sea of Doubt', while muted horns and romantic swells perfectly complement the sharper, psychedelic edges of 'Silent Spirit'.
Matching these songs' mutating melodies and moods is an emphasis on passing the mic, with guitarists Cook Craig and Joey Walker trading verses with regular vocalists Stu Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith.
With so many voices and instruments jostling for space, it can make for busy listening. However, the production — more polished and cleaner than these wilfully woolly rockers typically sound — makes untangling the knotty textures and grooves easier and especially rewarding on a good pair of headphones.
For all the record's sonic complexity, it's only a creative nudge forward compared to the bold leap in songwriting. There's nothing wrong with chanting about your creature of choice over gnarly riffs (Rattlesnake! Dragon! Balrog!), but Phantom Island allows some humanity to slip into the fantasy.
Many years of being locked into a punishing touring lifestyle is beginning to take its toll on King Gizz, with lyrics reflecting on habitually leaving their partners and kids to meet the demands of their cultish, global fanbase.
' There's more to it now than just leaving/ 'Cause there's so much more to miss' , Walker confesses between sighing strings and slide guitar on 'Eternal Return'.
' I would say don't be a musician, my son / Be a doctor, lawyer, or a stand-up citizen, ' Kenny-Smith advises on 'Silent Spirit', words which hit all the harder given he followed in the footsteps of his dad, Dingoes frontman Broderick Smith.
Touring burnout and fame fatigue, just like recruiting an orchestra, is another rock star cliché burnished into something more compelling through King Gizz's singular filter.
They use crashing airplanes and voyaging ships, of both the sea-and-space-faring variety, as metaphors to layer some Gizzverse world-building into vulnerable, world-weary lyrics.
Like 'Space Oddity' and 'Rocket Man' before it, 'Spacesick' uses an intergalactic trip as a metaphor for isolation. Mackenzie, lost in the orbit of the road, longs for the grounding gravity of dinner with the wife and kids.
' How did the little ones sleep? Did you make it to the zoo? … your brother told me they cried a lot when they saw a guy who looked like their pop.'
Even as poignant lyrics express the interior melancholy of these intrepid travellers, the music conveys a sense of adventure.
The 27th episode in the ongoing tale of King Gizzard's wild journey might leave lingering questions about the sacrifices and sustainability of their absurdly creative and successful enterprise, but as always, it's a thrill to be caught up in the ride.