I’ve always struggled to explain to people what is good about australian garage rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. I spent the entirety of my high-school years listening to nothing but 70’s psych rock and when a friend of mine introduced me to King Gizz I was instantly sold. There was something about their sound that really appealed to both my newly attained indie-sadboi tastes and my old love of long drawn out songs with unique instrumentation. The more I talk with people about this band, the more I realize that I might be almost completely alone in this. King Gizz lacks a sort of mainstream appeal outside of a few tracks, but they have a wide enough discography that a large variety of tastes can be accounted for. This lands a lot of first time listeners in a weird situation of not listening to the album they may enjoy the most and painting their entire discography in that sound.
It may seem like the band is stretching themselves to thin by mixing it up to frequently; not sticking to a certain sound has landed lots of other bands with horribly received albums. King Gizz manages (somehow) to keep one foot planted hard in 70’s psych rock allowing them to explore other sounds. Flying Microtonal Banana makes heavy use of microtonality and interesting instrument choices, while Paper Mache Dream Balloon uses an acoustic only approach for a very flowery sounding album. The slew of albums they have released in the past 6 years in addition to their variety allows anyone with a love of psych rock and most other genres to find something they like in this band, but the size of their discog is intimidating. Someone who likes mellowed out indie but doesnt like metal would be as interested in Sketches of Brunswick East as they would be turned off of the band by Murder of the Universe. Getting into King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard almost requires a friend who both knows your music taste and the bands discography well.
That being said, sometimes I have rose coloured glasses when it comes to this band. They scratch such a specific itch for me that I just adore this band so much. When I take a step back from the adoration, there’s noticeable reasons they aren’t able to achieve a more wide appeal. The band is a 7 piece with 3 Guitarists, 1 Bassist, 2 drummers, and a harmonica / keys player. The size of the outfit, while being part of the diversity of their sound, also keeps their sound fairly predictable. Gizz songs have a lot of shared motifs, even across albums, and their sound has a few staples which can be found across their albums (except for Paper Mache Dream Balloon and maybe Quarters!). The lead guitar lines usually are doubling the vocals, verses will end with fast pick slides / feedback loaded with delay and reverb, bass lines are usually in a bluesey steady groove, and most songs breakdown with a harmonica solo. While I love the sound of all of these, these trends and a few other prevail throughout their music and not enjoying them would essentially prevent one from enjoying any of their music. This really is the trap that most jam bands fall into, and its easy to spot just from the fans alone.
People who like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard usually really like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Despite the bands own admission that the lyrics are mostly sci-fi sounding nonsense, fans on various platforms have poured into the bands lyrical content and constructed a lore for their albums called “The Gizzverse”. It’s pretty thin stuff, but its very indicative of what kind of fan base they appeal to. It’s the new age version of people who like The Grateful Dead, and I guess all i’ve realized is im one of those people. I really just love this band, and if I get the opportunity to I will talk about them for half an hour or more and bore the fuck out of my friends. I’ve achieved the indie kid version of not shutting up about Pink Floyd, which is fitting because in high school I didn’t shut up about Pink Floyd.
If you want to get into this band, find someone that knows them to get a good recommendation on a starting point; my personal recommendation for an accessible entry point is Gumboot Soup. If you don’t want to do that and have patience, give a few different albums a try. Try to keep an open ear and don’t let the first album you try dissuade you from finding another album of theirs you might dig. If you listened to nothing but your 60 year old dad’s record collection growing up this band won’t be anything new.
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