King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Fishing for Fishies

Top 30 albums of 2019: #’s 30 – 26

Here we are at the end of 2019. As always, there’s too much good music released every year for anyone to hear all of it, but here are my top 30 albums of 2019 (of 60 that I reviewed) this year.

#30 – Vapors of Morphine – Lyons, Colley, Dupree Live at the Lizard Lounge 5/25/2007

This is a recording of a 2007 show that was the beginnings of what would become Vapors of Morphine. It’s a great recording of jazz, low rock, delta blues, and a bit of psychedelia and was a welcome gift for this lover of Morphine.

#29 – Black Midi – Schlagenheim

This album is difficult to describe. Is it prog-rock? Post-punk? Both? Neither? I think it’s neither. I do know that it’s a wild mix of crazy guitar riffs, epic drumming, and bizarre, frantic lyrics. It’s unlike anything you’ll hear, and I fully expect (and the band has pretty much said) that the next Black Midi album will be completely different.

#28 – BODEGA – Shiny New Model

BODEGA can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes and ears, and Shiny New Model was another sharp, witty post-punk record from these New Yorkers. BODEGA capture existential ennui, technology paranoia, and the annoyance of the daily grind better than most.

#27 – Cosmonauts – Star 69

I knew as soon as I heard the single “Seven Sisters” for the first time that Star 69 would be in the top half of this list. Sure enough, the entire album is a shoegaze wallop with their heavy wall of distorted guitars and California sunshine (intentionally mixed with a bit of smog, let’s be honest). Sharp lyrics about being tired of parties and sick of hipsters are an added bonus.

#26 – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Fishing for Fishies

Never ones to fear experimenting with multiple genres, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard decided to make a blues record and mix it with synthwave. It works. They’re probably one of the few bands who could do it, let alone make it a concept record about environmental issues and the constant creep of more technology into our lives.

Who’s in the top 25? Come back tomorrow to find out!

Keep your mind open.

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Review: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Fishing for Fishies

For their first album of 2019, Fishing for Fishies, prolific and unpredictable psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard wrote a blues record and an album promoting environmentalism.

The title track instantly puts down a happy grove while the lyrics suggest that our oceans need rescued and maybe we should lay off fishing for a while. The album’s cover features a robot (Han-Tyumi from Murder of the Universe?) casting a burning fishing line into a fiery lake that might be covered in a blazing oil spill. Stu Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith sing about the cruelty of commercial fishing and how it would be better to just let the fishies swim.

“Boogieman Sam” has a heavier groove that gets your head bobbing and toes tapping. It also lets Kenny-Smith cut loose with his harmonica, as do many of the tracks on this record. It’s fun to hear his playing in the forefront. The jazz swing of the back-to-nature ode “The Bird Song” (which gets into existential philosophy – “To a bird what’s a plane?…To a tree what’s a house?”) is great. It’s like a Steely Dan or Doobie Brothers track.

“Plastic Boogie” is another solid groove cut with Mackenzie and Kenny-Smith sharing lead vocals throughout it as KGATLW discuss how space age polymers are ruining our oceans and polluting everything in sight. “The Cruel Millenial” has Kenny-Smith singing lead while the rest of the Wizards sound like they’re having a blast playing behind him with pub-rock beats and riffs. “Real’s Not Real” bring back that cool 1970’s jazz-rock swing thing that is hard to describe, but recognizable once you hear it. They add some psych-fuzz and blues harmonica to it, which makes it even better.

Speaking of blues harmonica, it’s front and center on the sweet rocker “This Thing” (which also has a fine bass line from Lucas Skinner). “Acarine” brings in a touch of the Middle Eastern rhythms found on their album Flying Microtonal Banana as it floats along in a bit of a psychedelic haze and discusses how even the smallest of creatures are worth saving. The song slides into synthwave sounds and beats that flow well into the closing track – “Cyboogie” – which blends synthwave pulses, robotic (Han-Tyumi again?) vocals, and boogie jams.

It’s a fun record, one of KGATLW‘s most accessible in a while for listeners who haven’t heard their stuff before, and a great set up for their second album of the year – Infest the Rats’ Nest (review coming soon) – which continues the environmental themes of this one.

Keep your mind open.

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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s new album, “Fishing for Fishies,” due April 26th.

Never ones to rest on their laurels, Australian psych rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have announced their fourteenth album (in less than seven years, by the way), Fishing for Fishies, will be released on April 26th.

According to lead singer Stu Mackenzie, “We tried to make a blues record. 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.”

You can pre-order Fishing for Fishies at Flightless Records, and the band is about to embark on yet another massive tour across the globe. Catch them if you can. They never disappoint.

Keep your mind open.

[I’m fishing for subscriptions.]