2. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Polygondwanaland

These guys are amazing. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (which is my new favorite thing to say in a Scottish accent) are an Australian seven-piece psych-rock band with two drummers, three guitarists (one of whom plays a bright yellow guitar with the frets rearranged to create odd microtonal scales), and they released five - five - full-length albums last year. With that sort of insane production you might think the quality would suffer, but while I'll admit that some of them were a bit of a mixed bag, the November release Polygondwanaland is an epic psychedelic journey rich in spine-tingling Gizzverse lore, a thrilling array of genres, and an absolutely perfect flow without a single down moment. While King Gizzard don't sound the least bit old-fashioned, anyone who says there hasn't been good psychedelic rock since the 70's needs to listen to Polygondwanaland.

Typical drawn King Gizzard album cover. Not exactly aesthetically pleasing,
but with some interesting elements on it once you're into the music. Note the
horrible figure in the box down in the left. 

The album consists of four relatively distinct parts.  The first is the incredible ten minute opening track, "Crumbling castle". An intricate and precisely crafted piece of prog rock, it expertly builds up, segues between sections, introduces a bunch of different riffs and themes, but ties together beautifully, and stands alone as perhaps the finest single song King Gizz have created. Its release preceded the album by a few weeks, and got me thoroughly hyped, despite the brief sludge-metal coda, which some people tend to find off-putting.

The rest of the album sounds nothing like "Crumbling castle". From track 2 to 9 we're presented with a sonically much more restrained set, "Crumbling castle"'s tight prog-rock licks giving way to a an almost laidback, desert-psychedelia vibe. The songs flow unnoticably into one another, each picking up where the previous left off (a not entirely unfamiliar trick for King Gizzard, cf. 2016's Nonagon Infinity), and gradually increasing in intensity as the tracklist progresses. While the title track's main job is to calm us down after the adrenaline rush of "Crumbling castle" and introducing us to the magical, prehistoric world of Polygondwanaland (Gondwana is the name of the supercontinent formed 550 million years ago), it does so with a suprisingly complex set of polyrhythmns, plenty of flute and delicate acoustic guitar work. The next two tracks each turn the pace up one notch, with catchy, incessant ostinatoes (ostinati?), more synths, and a bit of Murder of the Universe's spoken-word weirdness and some scary demon-like backing vocals singing about dinosaurs. But still with flute, hypnotizing polyrhythmns, and some super groovy bass licks.

The album continues building, and a riffier, tighter structure emerges elegantly from the sprawling soundscape with "Inner cell"'s lovely acoustic guitar hook. As the song of conspiracy and revolt builds to a stunning climax, the super-awesome 80's horror movie synths of "Loyalty" lead us in to the most lyrically captivating moment on the album. After a bass-riff breakdown, the following barrage is performed with a tilted rhythm that just oozes madness, by some sort of god-figure (or man who fashions himself a god) who sees his people revolting against him: "What is with these / crimes of treason / I will fight this / inquisition / If I have to I will / not surrender / If I'm backed in / to a corner / I will draw and quarter / all the children / just to prove I'm / not a coward / I will put them all in / Judas cradle / just to show them a god incarnate". As the ever-present and now also ominous flute returns, the chant of "where's the loyalty?" has me shivering wondering what will happen next. I think "Horology" provides some hints.

This is from the hilariously horrible "Rattlesnake" green-screen video. Lead single
off Flying Microtonal Banana, last year's second-best King Gizzard release.

There's so much to say about each song that it doesn't make sense to go through them all, but it's hard to know what to leave out. In general the instrumentals might be catchier than the songs themselves, the vocals mostly being rhythmic devices, scattering imagerial keywords staccato across the beautiful soundscapes. But the lyrical themes do bear a lot of weight when combined with the albums Nonagon Infinity and Murder of the Universe, invoking many of the same storylines, and while the connections aren't all clear, there is a mutant robotish human being (is this Han-Tyumi?) with superpowers including a fourth type of color receptors in his eyes. There's a race of people who are most definitely dying, and another (more tetrachromatic mutants?) taking over (this storyline is vaguely being recounted at the end of the album, "Tetrachromacy", "Searching" and "The fourth colour"). There are oppressive rulers, and conspiracies agains them. And god knows what the nightmare-inducing character pictured on the album cover and described in disgusting detail on "Horology" is doing.

Anyway. Polygondwanaland is an utterly captivating album, for new and old Gizzheads alike. For longtime fans of it's an excellent development of their sound, incorporating the best elements from all their various experiments the last years. And for newcomers (or those who didn't like the intensity of Nonagon Infinity, the silliness on Murder of the Universe, the chillwave jazz on Sketches of Brunswick East or the less focued psychdelia of their older work) it serves as an enjoyable and accessible introduction to KGATWL's weird world. It's only 43 minutes long, and goes down really well in one short sitting. I think the only reason it's not at the centre of this flow chart is that it hasn't had enough time to mature among the fanbase yet.

Best tracks: "Crumbling castle", and it makes no sense to hear the others in isolation, but maybe "Deserted dunes welcome weary feet" and "Loyalty" are especially good.

3. Everything Everything - A Fever Dream

Apparently they took their name from the first words on Radiohead’s Kid A, but despite what you might expect from me I first heard this factoid after becoming fans of Everything Everything.

This Manchester rock quartet have a unique and compelling sound, and while the first element that stands out is the incredibly over-the-top vocals (apparently lead singer Jonathan Higgs discovered his singing talent after attempting to sing like Thom Yorke and failing, another factoid that I was unaware of at the time of my introduction to the band), what drew me in the most was the exciting genre blend of busy math-rocky rhythms combined with super joyous, catchy pop hooks. My introduction to the band was their 2015 single “I believe it now” (which really doesn’t sound anything like Radiohead at all), a simple, slick, ingenious pop song which circulated heavily in my brain for months and years. I put on their previous album Get Free, which certainly showcased their unique sound, but got a bit stressful and obnoxious for my taste. I was therefore excited to not only check out last year’s A Fever Dream, but even more so to acknowledge that they’d really distilled their sound to the bare, thrilling essentials, and put together a spectacular and razor sharp album to boot. With A Fever Dream, Everything Everything create a pop symphony, music that bites you and demands attention at first, but thrills and rewards on repeat listens, and they put it on a cohesive, bordering on concept album, with dark lyrical themes and enticing unanswered questions. Hats off!

Dark cover. I feel like the idea was better than the execution.

The fairly straightforward pop songs are what carry the album on the first few listens. “Desire”, “Can’t do” and “Run the numbers” all pick up where “I believe it now” left off, with huge choruses and relatively simple song structures, keeping Everything Everything’s characteristic chaotic rhythms and busy guitar lines to a minimum. Occasionally the math rock shines through though, like on late-album highlight “Ivory tower”, and the extended outros to opening cut “Night of the long knives” and title track “A fever dream”, and I just appreciate these sections even more on repeat listens. Finally, the necessary breathers on the album with relatively gentler pace reveal themselves as some of the brightest gems now that I’ve played the album to bits. Songs like “Big game”, “Good shot, good soldier” and “Put me together”, exploring the full range of their dynamic capacity, from ethereal ambience and soothing crooning to beautiful crescendos to manic climaxes, really showcase Everything Everything’s versatility and matured songwriting. These songs are experimental, exciting and dramatically different from anything else I listen to, but simultaneously easy on the ears, flowing beautifully in the context album – no easy feat.

The lyrics on the album are not to be passed by either. As the title suggests, they are much more sinister than the music, and the contrast is an effective one. Societal divides, the current political and sentimental landscape, and generally a pretty depressing outlook on our future are the main themes. "Desire" might sound like the title is meant as "Lust", but you realize that the song could rather have been called "Greed" after the opening phrase "I want this planet and I want it now". Other themes haven't popped out at me before reading up on it now, but "Big game" is undeniably a Trump diss written in Trump's own kindergarten style, and "Run the numbers" reads as quite a painful pro-Brexit song (the pain being in 'us sensible people' failing to understand the anger and reaction of 'the others'). On the more personal side, songs like "Good shot, good soldier" manage to combine this critical outlook on world order with internal crises, in frankly quite an overwhelming way. The repeated howls of "I've been sleeping!" on "Put me together" really drive home the message of the album, and while I kind of wish it would offer some advice other than A) hope it's just a dream you'll wake up from, or B) ask for help from God, I don't feel that a lack of Confuscian wisdom subtracts from my experience.

Fashion isn't one of their strengths. That's OK.

The two final songs are by far the least exciting on the album. I guess they provide some relief after the intense “Ivory tower” and some emotional closure from the heavy lyrical themes, but I tend to play them much less. However, a companion EP A Deeper Sea was released this spring, with two remixes and two new songs, whereof especially “The Mariana” is a worthy addition to the album’s magnificent oeuvre.

A Fever Dream is one of those delightfully creative pop albums that just brims with ideas (I get vibes from of Montreal, Grimes, or Janelle Monaé's best), and then manages to rein them in just enough. While it's impossible not to be pulled along by their enthusiasm, it could have been too much and gotten exhausting after a while. Alternatively the restraint could have just made it dull, but this album ends up hitting the sweet spot in between.  It becomes more than a showcase of creativity, succeeding in forming a focused, coherent and important statement.

Wallowing in despair has seldom been as much fun.

Best tracks: "Run the numbers", "Ivory tower", "Good shot, good soldier"