Tag: The Silver Cord

Top 25 albums of 2021 – 2025: #’s 25 – 21

I’m far behind on this, as it’s already mid-May 2026, but I’ve meant to create a list of my favorite records (and concerts, see other posts) of the last five years. I created such lists for my top stuff from 2020 through 2024, so I’m continuing the trend. Mind you, these are the top twenty-five albums I reviewed, not albums released during those five years. There were many excellent albums that slipped through the cracks. Enough backstory. Let’s get to it before this gets delayed yet again.

#25: Rochelle Jordan – Play with the Changes (2021)

This is a beautiful, funky, and sexy record that introduced me to Ms. Jordan’s music and instantly made me want to find out more about her work that mixes house music with R&B with ease.

#24: Brijean – Feelings (2021)

This lovely dream pop record came out of nowhere (for me at least) and floored me. They’re a fun duo who have yet to make a bad album.

#23: Ty Segall – Harmonizer (2021)

I was a bit surprised to hear Ty Segall embracing synthesizers and going into electronic music somewhat on this record, but then I wasn’t surprised because Segall is always exploring different genres and embracing his many influences. It was a cool surprise from him.

#22: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – The Silver Cord extended version (2023)

Speaking of cool surprises: King Gizzard goes full rave! There was the “regular” version of this all-synth album by the Australian psych giants and then this “extended” version of the album that I preferred. Once again, KGATLW showed they can adapt to anything they decide to play.

#21: Anika – Change (2021)

Haunting and gorgeous. That’s the best way I can describe this synthwave album from Anika. It snuggles / slithers up next to you and doesn’t leave for days.

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

Keep your mind open.

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Review: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – The Silver Cord

One of the best things about King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is that you never know what you’re going to get from album to album with them. It could be alt-folk, a psychedelic freakout, microtonal shredding, thrash metal, or, in the case of The Silver Cord – an album of synth music.

The album has the band diving headlong into their not-so-secret love of synthwave, EDM, rap, and krautrock, starting with the uplifting “Theia” – a song about how we are drifting on silver cords that attach us to ethereal planes we can’t describe but sometimes catch glimpses of now and then. It’s instantly catchy and uplifting, with all the synths and electronic beats rising us up to the natural follow-up of the title track – a beautiful track about birth, death, and rebirth. “Set” is about the wicked Egyptian god (and Egyptology and mythology is all over this record, which delights me to no end) and has a cool rave beat throughout it.

“Chang’e” has the band singing about a goddess of dreams and builds from almost an ambient track into a full-blown dance cut in perhaps the loveliest moment on the record. “Gilgamesh” brings techno-Viking beats to the classic tale of the eternal hero. “Swan Song” uses industrial beats to encourage us to cut the cords that bind us to our attachments and egos and “Go explore. Be untethered. Be unequalled. Grab the sword. Be emperor. Be yourself. Be an orb. Be your spirit. Don’t fear it.”

The closing track, “Extinction,” tackles one of KGATLW’s favorite topics – the destruction of the Earth by mankind’s idiocy and greed. There are hints of “Crumbling Castle” in the beats and lyrics (“Castles crumble with a groan.”) as well. The album ends on an encouraging note, however, as they sing, “I can see everything. I can be in the music.”

So can all of us.

As if The Silver Cord isn’t good enough, and a cool enough project from KGATLW, the band also released an extended version of the record in which they explore long-form synth-jams and add further lyrics to delve further into the album’s themes of death, reincarnation, the afterlife, and enlightenment. The shortest track on the extended version is the ten-minute and eighteen-second-long version of “Set.” The longest is the extended mix of “Theia,” which is just over twenty minutes. All the extended mixes are excellent, and some could be dropped into a DJ set without trouble.

This makes the second excellent album KGATLW have released this year, the first being the epic thrash metal album PetroDragonic Apocalypse: or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. To go from that to The Silver Cord is a stunning accomplishment that few other bands could pull off and make look easy.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]