King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (2021 reissue)

The seven-headed Aussie rock beast King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard return with a new vinyl edition of ‘Fishing For Fishies’, perhaps their most perfectly-realised album to date.

The Eco Edition has been pressed on Eco-Mix vinyl and is housed in a brown paper bag after previous pressings quickly sold out. Released on the band’s own Flightless Records, here is a world where the organic meets the automated; where the rustic meets the robotic. Where the past and future collide in the beautiful present. ‘Fishing For Fishies’ is a blues-infused blast of sonic boogie that struts and shimmies through several moods and terrains. From the soft shuffle Outback country of the opening title track through the sunny easy listening of ‘The Bird Song’ (think a lysergically-soaked Laurel Canyon circa 1973) and on through the party funk of ‘Plastic Boogie’ (which somehow summons the spirit of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Innervisions’) the road-trucking, Doors-like highway rock of ‘The Cruel Millennial’ and ‘Real’s Not Real’ - what Carpenters might have sounded like had they existed entirely on vegemite and weed - it’s a dizzying, dazzling display which addresses a number of pertinent environmental issues along the way. “We tried to make a blues record,” says frontman Stu Mackenzie. “A blues-boogie-shuffle-kinda-thing, but the songs kept fighting it - or maybe it was us fighting them. Ultimately though we let the songs guide us this time; we let them have their own personalities and forge their own path. Paths of light, paths of darkness. This is a collection of songs that went on wild journeys of transformation.” Quiet though it was on the record front, 2018 was hardly a year of rest for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. In almost perpetual motion, the band continued their unstoppable rise as their juggernaut of a live show grew and grew and grew, with a mindblowing headline slot at Green Man Festival, a massive sold-out US tour in the summer which saw them play their biggest venues to date, a brain-frying sold out Brixton Academy show, two gigs in Russia and Istanbul where they played in front of over 15,000 people and putting on the fourth edition of their annual Gizzfest in Melbourne amongst the highlights.