King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard -- Butterfly 3000: Review

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard -- Butterfly 3000

[KGLW]

It feels impossible, nay, disrespectful to the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard fanbase that the band has been painting themselves into a corner lately. Their last two records K.G. and L.W., companion pieces in their Explorations into Microtonal Tuning series, both suffered from monotonous songwriting that made the two albums feel like a blur of psychedelic nonsense sometimes. Each album had a few good songs but mostly came off as amorphous 40-minute blobs of proggy microtonal fuckery.

That was why I was so excited for their upcoming album Butterfly 3000, which the bandmates amped up to be their most psychedelic album so far. A diehard fan like me was intrigued at the mention of King Gizzard experimentation as its resulted in some of my favorite albums from the band in the past. But sadly, while I commend the band’s journey into virgin waters on Butterfly 3000, it’s ultimately hindered by the crutches of songwriting that make the album less of a new chapter and more like a demo tape with a new coat of paint.

I’ll start with the positives. The risk of diving into a new genre that isn’t tangentially related to their psych-rock-shtick was high, and in terms of tone, the band finds little difficulty in meshing that with their signature KG sound. Also while it doesn’t blow me away, the production is consistent, and they seem to neatly fit synths into their guitar-driven songs pretty well.

Most of my issues with the album can be seen in most tracks on this album. Let’s take the opener “Yours” for example, which like every other song on this album, is centered around a recurring synthline that guides the whole song. It’s shiny and bubbly, sounding like something that a novice to an analog synth would make on a first try, and like this, it lacks the integrity to carry interest for the rest of the song. Other tracks like “Shanghai”, “Dreams”, and especially “Catching Smoke” suffer from this issue of a synthesizer lacking depth. I get that this gimmick is laid on thick being that this is more of a “suite” than an “album” but it just gets tiring over time.

Next is the vocals, which in almost every song is leader Stuart Mackenzie singing in this stuffy nasal falsetto that sounds like a parent’s baby voice singing for a whole album. The lukewarm performances only seem to distract from the mix, making the album feel infantile and unlikeable. Plus, the staircase vocal lines are alright, but get tiring after being there on almost every song on the record like on “Dreams” which is easily one of my least favorite tracks. The obnoxious bedroom pop vocals are an earsore for most of the album, and honestly make it the worst aspect of the record.

I think the most depressing letdown of Butterfly 3000 is the lack of strong songwriting here. Like the album’s recent predecessors, the crutch of King Gizzard-style songwriting is what makes many of these songs so skippable. Like in the lingering “Catching Smoke” which easily overstays its welcome to the vapid “Ya Love” and its tiring, repetitive chorus. Again, I’ll commend the band’s ability to find their tone within the dream pop genre, it’s just that they stop the experimentation right there, and fall back on their trademark songwriting to fill in the cracks.

Ok, ok, ok, it’s not all bad. I think the album’s second half is substantially better than the first with tracks like “2.02 Killer Year” and its tight lyrics sung by both Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith, calling for attention to climate change. “Black Hot Soup” is definitely the shining track on Butterfly 3000, making it their best attempt at the dream pop genre on the record with its interesting vocals lines, driving skittered groove, and kaleidoscopic guitar work. And despite the album’s deliberate fight against a single release, “Interior People” written by guitarist Joey Walker is likely to be the album’s biggest hit and delivers their catchiest melody here with its bright pianos and endearing vocals.

Butterfly 3000 is King Gizzard’s lukewarm dive into dream pop that delivers some nice tracks here and there, but generally suffers from growing pains in its songwriting and vocal performances.

5.4/10.

Listen To: “Interior People”, “Black Hot Soup”

RIYL: Ty Segall, Oh Sees, Tame Impala