King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Polygondwanaland (From the Vault)
hey folks, welcome to some discography reviews. i’ve been writing music reviews for some friends in a discord server for a few years now in various forms, but i figured i’d like to get them all in a more centralized space, so here we are! this first series of reviews is a review of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s discography, starting in 2011 with Willoughby’s Beach and running right into 2021 with Butterfly 3000. this review was originally written in August 2021.
welcome back folks! King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s 4th album of 2017 was Polygondwanaland, an experiment in polyrhythms.
kicking it off with Crumbling Castle huh. damn. this track slaps. my partner and i watched The Last Unicorn shortly before i heard this song for the first time so now there’s a part of me that’s always gonna entwine the bittersweet, self destructive, isolationist tones of these two pieces of media forever. i’d love to see a rankin/bass animated MV for this. after that, it feels like the album shifts into something different entirely, like part 1 is over time for something else. Polygondwanaland is GREAT. EXCELLENT vibes. and that smooth transition! sweet. Castle In the Air is neat but not my fav. i really like the verses in Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet – they’ve got such good cadence to them. after the lyrics, when it goes full instrumental, there’s a really cool synth riff that comes in starting around 2 minutes but then mixes with the rest of the instruments coming in that’s just :chefkiss: Inner Cell’s neat too – feels like a shift outta the Polygondwanaland sequence, kinda like part 3 of the album. The chorus here’s got some cool vocal work on it, and i really like how the song swells for the final vocal bits. Loyalty bringing that synth back in the opener ooooh. feels very coinflip from Inner Cell, from revolt or betrayal to backlash. Horology’s chill – i like how it sets up the final segment of the album, which, wait a sec. this album’s four segments, each around 10 minutes (well… not with the Fourth Color, but still), three songs each except Crumbling Castle. oh KGLW. Searching… is a nice break before The Fourth Color, which has such a cool wild opening. i like what they do in the first verse of splitting the vocals, extremely trippy effect – and they bring in the Mind Fuzz riff in the second verse, yeah? nice. the minute of silence was kinda odd, but the end kinda goes off with that wild energy. very cool.
faves – Crumbling Castle, Polygondwanaland, Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet,
dislikes –
alrighty! well after that revelation i had about the segmenting of the album, i should probs rank the segments in my order of preference: Polygondwanaland, Crumbling Castle, Inner Cell, the Tetrachromacy (though i really enjoyed the whole album). i had a hard time pinning down a lot of my concrete thoughts on this one because the vibes are EXTREMELY easy to slip into and just kinda float with it. i might be wildly off base here but it feels like their lyrical style here was a shift too – potentially something a little more conventional in structure and scope (ie: stories but not in the way Murder of the Universe was), to offset the wild shit they were doing musically with the polyrhythms. on the whole, really enjoyed this listen. i suspect my view of this album with probably grow a little over time, haha
Polygondwanaland – 7/10
also, something really neat – this record is completely free! go get it right from the source! do whatever you want with it!
or, support the band by adding it on Bandcamp
first: Willoughby’s Beach | previous: Sketches of Brunswick East | next: Gumboot Soup
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