King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

I was born in 1979 by a generation of high school drops outs who were either in a war or protested a war. They all had one thing in common. That one thing was drugs and rock roll. (OK, so that's two things but fuck you! Everybody HATES you, math fascist ). So anyways...Where was I? Oh yeah...King Gizzard.

This band takes me back to a time when my dad used to jam Led Zeppelin in the car, smoking with the windows rolled up and yelling at me because I put my shirt over my mouth to block the future emphysema and lung tumors. The only reason this part of the story is important is because I like to talk about myself...a lot.

Now that I've set the tone of how this music needs to be heard (smokey, late, and with long hair), we can talk about the band.

King Gizzard is a 7 to 78 piece band as far as I can tell from Australia or somewhere, not the good ol' U S of A. I just found these guys recently, so maybe I missed a boat somewhere. (Insert a joke about me being Asian here.)

The albums intro, "Alluda Majaka," basically kicks this shit off with a Viagra boner of the notify your doctor variety. It has organs, it has weird-ass samples from Bollywood or something and has this funky-ass bass and drum groove that makes me bang my head so hard the car next to me calls a priest to come exorcise my demons. The whole album has this purposely lo-fi quality, but it's amazing really. The vocals are far away and swishy but full of happy AND depressing melodies layered perfectly into a hippie sandwich.

It just vibes out on grooves so deep your kids will wonder why you're making them all sit in a circle drinking juice boxes and seeing if their shirts' pictures are moving too.

"ABABCd" breaks the grooves with a 17 second jammy jam and gets you to wake up enough to feel the munchies coming on.

My favorite song on the album is "Hot Wax." It has this bassline that slaps like new born baby ass and a crunchy drum break with a harmonica part that would get John Popper fired. This is the song I can't get out of my head like stage-five brain cancer.

The other thing I love is the album artwork. I love album artwork. People these days don't put the effort in anymore. It's the one thing that even made me stop my constant internet-surfing zombie-brain and check it out.

They also sell everything on vinyl. I also love vinyl. I grew up in a time were you bought an album and listened to it while only looking at the front and back cover over and over again. And this is basically what sums up the experience in listening to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. They are a band who brings back the listening experience and realizes artwork and albums you can listen to front to back are still important.