Cool threads
Inscrutable Aussies change lanes on their 25th album in 13 years.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
★★★
The Silver Cord
KGLW. CD/DL/LP
JUST AS MANY 10-year-olds enjoy the addictive taxonomy of Pokémon cards, so too one can get lost in the Gizzverse, an ever-expanding galaxy of genres and moods spread across a dauntingly prolific discography. Discursive with lyrics too, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have written about environmental apocalypse, the Christchurch Mosque shootings, and Han-Tyumi, a human-envying cyborg of their own creation. Loveable wildcards, they’ve tapped psych, Krautrock, microtonal Anatolian music, rap, electronica and more with nary a thought for fan confusion or over-saturation. Indeed, 2017 alone brought five new LPs.
One imagines job satisfaction chez Gizzard is high, then, each subsequent album an unfolding adventure made by tight-knit pals seeking fresh thrills. In a world thusgoverned, June 2023’s PetroDragonic
Apocalypse was never going to be bland. Instead, Gizzard’s 24th studio album was a breathless thrash metal assault exploring “humankind… witches, dragons and shit”, the kind of sonic dare we’ve come to expect.
Quicksilver messengers, the Aussie sextet change tack again on The Silver Cord. Its cover depicts them behind banks of synthesizers, influences this time out seemingly including Georgio Moroder, Jon & Vangelis gone trance, Harold Faltermeyer, and maybe a hint of Beastie Boys circa Intergalactic. We also get Simmons electronic drums, abrasive synth-leads redolent of the theme tune from kids TV animation Roobarb, vocoder, mellotron, and esoteric lyrics about ancient myths and astral travelling. As KG&TWL smell all of this in their cauldron and levitate, you wonder if they’ll ever come back down. Daringly – perhaps too daringly – The
Silver Cord comes in two incarnations. There’s a long-form, more challenging version wherein “cyborg jams run free”, and a much more succinct version which sees the songs distilled to their (sometimes) poppy hooks. This means we get a three-minute version of buoyant opener Theia and a 20-minute version; the amuse-bouche incarnation of The Silver Cord and the full-extended-mix banquet (which, thanks to the whooshing trance of the title track and Chang’e [sic] feels like a fairly accurate simulacrum of an Escape To Samsara club night at The Fridge in Brixton, London circa 1995).
“It’s liberating to terrify yourself,” Gizzard frontman/producer Stu Mackenzie has said of his band’s latest sorcer y, while the long mix of Theia reports “like a dog on a freeway I commit my life to end it my way”. It could be a metaphor for the stylistic, flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants risks upon which KG&TWL seem to thrive. Ultimately, the thrills on The Silver Cord are intermittent, but you have to admire Gizzard’s relentless pursuit of the next high.