The dust of our childhood musical influences blow back toward us eventually, whether intentional or not. Revisit an old album, and it might reconnect you with an old friend or family member you associate these sounds with. Sometimes, we take that journey as a collective simply by being open to letting anything happen.
Recently, in a land far, far away (from Milwaukee anyway), the six members of the epically impossible to “genre-fy” King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard let the synth-laden dust settle from their 2023 album, The Silver Cord. The Australian band had tried everything since their formation in 2012 — from psychedelic to prog and garage to metal. So they got down to business opening their musical hearts to a new approach that became their latest record, Flight b741 (“Bee Seven Four One” KGLW leader Stu Mackenzie enunciated kindly for me before we kicked off our conversation).
This most recent adventure into the musical stratosphere all came back to the “country-fried ’70s American rock ‘n roll” sound the band grew up on. Their version is the kind of stuff that boogies harder than most things produced since the ’70s and evokes carefree, eyes-wide-open fun for hard times — a unicorn of a sound. Organ? Harmonica? Pedal Steel? Piano (in addition to those ever-moving guitars)? Present. Bring on the instrument-pile in a rock ‘n’ roll bowl.
Mackenzie confirmed those layered influences in our conversation: “obvious ones are The Band, Dylan, Steve Miller, CCR [Creedence Clearwater Revival] … early ’70s Stones … even stuff like The Faces, The Who … probably T. Rex. Yeah, there’s stacks. When I listen to the record now … I think we’re having fun in there. I think we got kind of feral in there.”
He admits KGLW’s 26th(!) studio effort was the first record that used a revolving door of lead vocalists, really ramping up the collaborative through-line they’ve always had.
“King Gizzard has always been a very collaborative band and always has been very ‘open door,’” he explained. “It’s the only reason it’s worked so well, or at least we’ve been able to make so many records together without killing each other. We have to let everybody spread their wings and fly.
“Don’t bring in riffs, don’t tell any person what beat or what bass line or what riff they should do; just keep it as free and open as possible and each person will kind of find that spot, that glue.”
Maybe that’s the appeal of KGLW’s open, unicorn of a sound. It’s a relentless boogie that won’t stop searching until it finds a groove that makes our musical hearts sing, the same as when we were kids.
You can hear our full conversation using the player at the top of the page, catch King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard at Milwaukee’s Miller High Life Theatre next Wednesday, Sept. 4, and enjoy Flight b741 out on p(doom) Records wherever you find your music.
