Never Ones to Go More Than a Few Months Without a New Record, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Have Released Butterfly 3000, Their Career-Best
Never Ones to Go More Than a Few Months Without a New Record, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Have Released Butterfly 3000, Their Career-Best
It's the newest addition to your psychedelic summer.
Why not receive Check This Out! directly to your inbox?
When I reviewed the last effort by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard in early March, I was pretty stoked with the results.
After a few years of albums that I found somewhat lackluster, L.W. seemed to combine everything the Melbourne band had been trying to accomplish during this period with a winning outcome. This more focused record left me more hopeful for their future.
What I didn’t expect was for King Gizz to release their career-best in the follow-up.
After leaving behind discussions of climate change in the form of thrash metal and ditching their explorations in microtonal sounds (for now), King Gizz has released Butterfly 3000. While still having a theme, this suite of ten songs is the least gimmicky thing the band has released to date.
Butterfly 3000 is a psychedelic journey through a kaleidoscope of arpeggiated synth loops, which may not sound like it would have much commercial appeal. But this is the band’s version of a summer pop album, and it works fantastically.
Soon after L.W.’s release, King Gizz announced they had fresh material for release in June. Instead of pre-releasing half of the album, an annoying trend in the time of diminishing attention spans, Butterfly 3000 would receive no singles or promotional material. It’s an unusual approach for your most accessible album, but I get the feeling that the band knew they had a shit-hot release that would speak for itself, with bandleader Stu Mackenzie declaring it as his favorite work so far.
“Yours” sets the stage for the auditory odyssey with a repetitious synth loop that immediately draws you into the project. With fuzzed-out bass, drums, sleigh bells, and little acoustic riffs that run up and down the fretboard, it’s a welcomed mission statement.
Following is “Shanghai,” the equivalent of sipping lemonade on a river cruise - for your ears. Mackenzie’s falsetto proclamation of “I only want to wake up in my dreams” is the refrain that drives “Dreams,” a heady exploration that segues nicely into “Blue Morpho,” a cousin to Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song.”
While most records are frontloaded these days, the mid-album run on Butterfly 3000 is what has solidified it as one of the year’s best. “Interior People” is a surprisingly delicate krautrock track full of juicy 80s era synths and piano jabs and is a real treat. Immediately following is “Catching Smoke,” built around a loop that sounds like a dulcimer having a controlled seizure, before giving way to a chorus that strangely reminds me of The Who’s “Eminence Front.” It’s the record’s best track, with Mackenzie singing cheeky lyrics like “I’ve got happiness in my pocket / it cost me 25 dollars / maybe we could go halvies? / So gimme just a couple hours / starting fires with soggy timber / then, I'll have the magic powers.”
“2.02 Killer Year” closes out this three-song mind melter with a post-lockdown celebration. Throwing away their old concerns, King Gizz has everything “coming up Beach Boys” while grabbing their surfboards. “Black Hot Soup” is an updated interpretation of the classic Gizz sound, and the floating mellotron flutes of “Ya Love” are not to be missed.
While most bands would look to drum machines for an electronic release of this level, Butterfly 3000 works best because the band still incorporates organic instruments throughout the songs. The synth loops are the star of the show on the surface, but Michael Cavanaugh’s brilliant drums and Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s percussion provide humanity to the album.
Butterfly 3000 is also King Gizz’s first studio endeavor to be self-released, and the band feels re-energized by this development. They’ve had a massive cult following for years, but could their 18th album make them household names? It’s one of the feel-good records of the summer that will place highly on the year-end list.
Set aside all of your worries, and give King Gizzard and the Lizzard Wizard your 45 minutes.
Butterfly 3000 is available now on KGLW.
If you enjoyed this review, why not share it with a few friends?