On the Australian sextet’s 26th effort, Flight b741, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have treated fans to yet another musical pivot. Their last record, 2023’s The Silver Cord, is a near two-hour journey through a wall of synths and electronic beats. They probably haven’t sold their synths, but they’ve at least locked them in a closet or stacked them carefully in the corner of their Flightless HQ studio.
For those who find delving into the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard catalog an insurmountable task, it might be helpful to think of their discography as a more serious Ween. Each album varies greatly in musical style. (Unfortunately for some, King Gizzard does sing less about their dicks waving in the wind and more about environmental destruction, but the genre-hopping remains the same.) Truly, if there’s a genre that you gravitate toward more than others, chances are King Gizzard has a song or an album like it.
A glaring omission of musical style that was missing from the first twenty-five King Gizzard albums was one that Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz would put on during his family’s barbecue. It’s their classic rock record. Or at least, it’s their best impression of one.
On the surface, Flight b741 has all of the makings of a record that fathers across America would consider the golden age of rock and roll. The album is littered with soaring harmonies, undeniable hooks, and harmonica riffs. All these are things that check the proverbial boxes of a 70’s era analog record.
At the heart of a great classic rock record lies a collection of songs that you can turn up to blow off some steam. Fortunately, Flight b741 is robust with such songs. “I can’t wait to leave this nightmare behind,” singer Stu Mackenzie confesses on the first track, “Mirage City,” against a backdrop of harmonies sung by his Gizzard brethren. It’s a song that feels like a Friday night drive from work to the bar, hoping the house band will play something you know. Fortunately, KG takes your request on the second track “Antarctica”. “I made a deal with the devil in the fuselage/Crashed into Heaven in the dead of winter/Walked on thin ice and got snowed under/Caught my death and got iced over,” the band sings with a not-so-subtle reference to The Kinks’ classic “Lola.” There are nods to all of the classic rock giants all over this album, from the nasally, Mark Knopfler influenced guitar tone on “Field of Vision,” to the title track, which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Stones record. It’s as if King Gizzard sought to make an album that comprised the best parts of your dad’s record collection.
When you work at the breakneck pace of King Gizzard though, it can be hard to translate the nuance of a genre on a record. For example, as a lifelong student of thrash metal, King Gizzard’s fifteenth record, 2019’s Infest The Rats’ Nest, seemed like the logical entryway for a band with such a staggering discography. The shredding guitars and pounding double bass drum scratched that thrashy itch, but it lacked one thing: the riff. There are killer riffs strewn throughout Infest The Rats’ Nest, but they aren’t the driving force behind the songs. There are moments when the album feels like what thrash metal sounds like to someone who isn’t a fan.
At times, this is the case with Flight b741. Hard-panned drums and tube amps – some of the intangibles of classic 70’s rock records – are largely absent from the finished product. These things would have been the perfect seasoning to make these songs just a little more palatable at the Walz Labor Day weekend cookout, but King Gizzard’s joy of making this record is so infectious that it’s hard to be too fastidious. Though the classic rock era is growing more distant in the rearview mirror, it remains to be the definitive genre for cutting loose on a Friday night. Any given song on Flight b741 sounds exactly like that – the band getting together in a room and rocking out. Fuck it. Crack a beer and turn this sucker up to 11.
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