(Photo Credit - Jason Galea)
Album Review - King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: Butterfly 3000 (June 11, 2021)
Australian six piece King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are back with their 18th studio album to date! To say that the band are some of the most prolific songwriters in music today is an understatement. Already the second album of 2021, Butterfly 3000 finds the band taking leaps that we haven't quite seem them take in their 10 year career. Always bringing the heavy psychedelic influenced sound, the band mixes that up on Butterfly 3000 to create something wholly new.
With the heavy inclusion of synth work throughout the album, the band takes us in a sharply dream-pop influenced sound that has tinges of electronica and the familiar sounds of psychedelia we've come to know from the band. On the Butterfly 3000, frontman Stu Mackenzie had this to say: “On Butterfly 3000, we’ve set some parameters we’ve never really touched on before,”. Before adding “I feel most inspired when I’m not in competition with myself, and I’m always attracted to ideas that feel utterly new. Maybe that’s an idiosyncratic way to approach music, but it’s the Gizzard way. I often feel like we’re aliens, compared to how others write and make and look at music”. While the band may feel that they're extraterrestrial, there truly is no one on the scene quite like them, both in sound and the prolific speed at which they churn out new stuff for their followers.
For the uninitiated, this may be the most accessible album from the band yet, as it does stray into that dream-pop direction. But don't get it twisted, it may be a bit different from their usual sound. However, it's still unmistakably a King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard record, much in the same way as how The Grateful Dead's American Beauty and Workingman's Dead was an interesting turn in sound for the band but was still simultaneously them.
While King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have enjoyed immense success on the alternative scene, it will be interesting to see if Butterfly 3000 vaults them into crossover territory. I definitely think it's a possibility, as it's a new direction that doesn't betray who they are. We highly encourage you to get in on this one. It's got a lot to give.
Rating - 5/5