King Gizzard And The
Lizard Wizard
Eyes Like The Sky
Flightless / FUSE
This
is my favourite ‘What The Fuck?’ record so far this year. This decade,
actually. You’d expect nothing less from Melbourne collective King Gizzard
& the Lizard Wizard to be honest, such is their penchant for not doing
anything by the book. Not even close.
What
this is, aside from being their fourth release thus far, is a spoken word
spaghetti western record – almost an audio book in fact, set to music. In a
nutshell, Oz music legend Brod Smith plays the part of narrator (in one of the
best western voice-over voices you’ll ever hear, hands down), while the band
paint vivid aural portraits over the top. You are lost in a desert somewhere. You can feel the hot wind. Your arse does hurt from riding your trusty steed for miles and miles. This
is epic stuff.
Vocalist
and songwriter Stu McKenzie approached Smith with this idea, Smith dug on it,
and away they went. The music was recorded in a Melbourne lounge room, Smith’s
voice-overs were recorded into a computer mic – all very easy, no fuss. Smith
wrote the words and gave them to the band, and the band also wrote some music
and gave it to Smith, to inspire the next chapter.
The
result is a booming soundscape of ragged guitars, thundering drums, dusty
boots, outlaws, booze and desperation, criminals and heroes, a film without
pictures but you can see it so clearly, you’re there. The idea itself would
have been a huge gamble, but it’s resulted in one of the records of the year,
no doubt.
Samuel J. Fell
No comments:
Post a Comment