King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard -- The Silver Cord
[KGLW]
10 albums ago, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard entered a new era of their music that slowly pushed me away from being the superfan I once was. Cliches are annoying and repetitive, but there’s often a truth to them, and the same is true for how Gizz changed with the pandemic. Heading into 2020, the band released arguably their strongest album yet with Infest the Rats’ Nest, the band’s dive into thrash metal that was unexpectedly their most successful experiment yet. A world tour followed with a flurry of feature-length live albums and the band seemed to be at their creative peak.
What follows is, in my mind, and I’m probably not alone on this, a blur in King Gizzard’s discography. Time stretched as people quarantined and this presented a challenge for the band’s 7-member lineup which primarily wrote music as a jamband. You just can’t rehearse songs over video call, so with K.G. and its companion album L.W., the band wrote and recorded their first album completely alone. Every member at their separate homes writing and recording demos, splicing them together, Frankenstein-ing a song together piece by piece. King Gizzard got back to writing in-person soon after but never seemed to recover.
Alright; I’ve missed my chance to comment on the last 6 King Gizz albums so I’ll do a lightning round right now:
Made in Timeland (2022) -> 5.5/10; 30 minutes of fun jammy demos but nothing worth writing about
Omnium Gatherum (2022) -> 5/10; a gargantuan attempt at a prog epic that ends up with no songs that I can remember
Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava (2022) -> 7/10; 7 spiny grooves with catchy choruses that made for Gizz’s best album this year
Laminated Denim (2022) -> 5/10; just a sequel to Made in Timeland
Changes (2022) -> 5/10; Gizz’s optimistic fuzzy bucket hat album that does bedroom pop in a way that just doesn’t excite
PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation (2023) -> 6/10; A return to thrash that called back to the fire on Rats’ Nest but with meh songwriting.
For the most part, long-term career storytelling isn’t necessary in understanding King Gizzard’s discography, but when we talk about The Silver Cord, we have to talk about Butterfly 3000.
Butterfly 3000 hurt me in a way that was difficult to describe, but it kind of felt like my child was leaving me. It was teased as the band’s first full electronic album, which was true, but upon listening, it sounded the farthest from anything the band had done before–and not in a good way. The mixing was awkward, the grooves were barely tangible, and the bland songwriting meshed the 10 songs together into one long, forgettable, synthy mess. So my hesitation with The Silver Cord was fear of a repeat of what happened on Butterfly 3000, and gladly, it is a much stronger attempt.
The Silver Cord is like Butterfly 3000 in that it is made up of 3-5 minute synth-pop tunes, but this time the energy is so much more there. The band’s vocals actually hold presence with catchy melodies that stand out under the 10-or-so synths and effects layered on top. The performances are fun but still casual in that classic King Gizzard fashion. The lyrics aren’t very important but the few lines you are able to discern are epic and kooky, making a musical space that is genuinely fun.
Most importantly, the grooves are there. There’s a bounce-and-skip to each track that feels both novel in its texture but familiar in its tone–making you bob your head in a way that only King Gizzard can do. The leading track “Theia” has a cute chord progression that just gets me wiggling. “Gilgamesh” has a fun, campy 70s sci-fi vibe to it decorated with vocoders and bumping synths that give it a silly proto-techno energy. My favorite track “Swan Song” has an almost NIN ring to it with its thumping beat and wandering structure that is genuinely exciting to listen to.
Oddly enough, the album doesn’t end after its 7 tracks, and instead features extended mixes of every song, spanning over 10 minutes each. It’s a weird choice, and feels perfectly on brand for the band. At the heart of these songs are the grooves–which is what everyone came here for anyway–so why not have an hour-and-a-half of them? If the songs didn’t tell me before, these goofy extended mixes tell me that with The Silver Cord, King Gizzard really knew what they were doing.