Anton Checkov said of Leo Tolstoy: ““When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature.” Replace “literature” with “rock music” and “Tolstoy” with “King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard.”
The Australian KGWL began their psychedelic journey as a garage rock band in the vein of Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall, but over the past decade and a half, they’ve incorporated 60 years of rock history into their music, and produced an astonishing 25 (and counting) studio albums. The Gizz have written rock songs and thrash metal albums. They’ve tried their hand at boogie rock and R&B. They have a jazz album and a story album set to a spaghetti western soundtrack. They’ve played jams to exacting time constraints, and written an album that uses each diatonic mode. They doctored their guitars and recorded three albums of microtonal music, and they dispensed with them all together to write on keyboards and synthesizers. They’ve even tried their hand at some Run-DMC/Beastie Boys style rap. They’re a jam band, a prog band, and dance band, and they’ve made themselves a mutant canon of rock. If you only listened to KGWL albums, you would get a pretty good (if weird) idea of this whole rock & roll thing.
KGWL have big ears and take big gulps. They are as prolific as any band can be while still making listenable music. And if you’re new to the band, you should probably get a guide, because this is one ocean you don’t want to dive straight into. Because There Be Monsters.
That’s why I’m here.
First, I’ll tell you where not to go. Don’t start at the end. The Gizz’s most recent releases are best if you’re already on their wacky wavelength. The Silver Cord, their ode to Krautrock, is a synthesizers only affair, and while that’s certainly a facet of their sound, it’s not the reason they’re selling out three shows in a row at Red Rock later this year. You should also stay away (at least initially) from PetroDragon Apocalypse…. It’s one of their (now recurring) metal releases, and the chewiest of the bunch. 2022’s Laminated Denim and Changes are both jammy records created with theoretical constraints. They are fun, but for fans only. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, also of 2022, is their best “jammy” release, but instead of trying it on first, I would save it for more expert ears.
Likewise, you don’t want to start your journey at the beginning. KGWL were a much simpler band they they began, and I don’t feel they got the plane up to cruising speed until their fifth album I’m in Your Mind Fuzz, which is a vert solid garage rock album. Quarters! their first experimental (every song is exactly 10:10 long) jam record, followed, which laid down the one-two punch of where this band was going.
The consensus pick on where to start, where I started, and where I recommend you start is 2016’s Nonagon Infinity, so named because there are nine songs that, when played on a loop, are an unbroken piece of music. The last song ends where the first one starts. The album captures what their fans love about their music without the genre digressions that have become their stock and trade. Nonagon Infinity is the music of a jammy garage rock band that listens to a lot of metal. They are a hard rock jam band. And this is their most representative album.
Where to go from there? Forward, I guess. They cut their favorite albums of mine over the next couple years, including the proggy Polygonwanaland, the jazzy Sketches of Brunswick East, the thrashy Infest the Rats Nest, and the double dose K.G. and L.W. – which would be a nice alternative onramp to the band.
If I’ve one complaint about this wonderful band, it’s that I wish they were better writers (which makes it insane that I compared them to Tolstoy). As much as I love the sound of KGWL, I don’t see myself covering any of their songs. Perhaps that’s why I think that when they turn the gain down on their amps, they can sound a little flaccid. Gumboot Soup and Fishing for Fishes are fine for smoking pot on the porch, but I don’t think they’ll take the place of the 70s classics they’re aping. For that reason, I really hope they don’t ever give us an acoustic album, at least not until they bring on a full-time lyricist. The Grateful Dead needed non-member Robert Hunter to write their words for them, maybe the Gizz need their own Tolstoy.