King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are a testament to the liberating power of giving yourself restrictions. Whether making every song on a record the exact same length (2015’s Quarters!), or constructing an entire album to connect into an infinite loop (last year’s Nonagon Infinity), the Aussie armada thrive on the symbiotic relationship between governing principles and disorder. The result is psychedelic rock that plays like a pinball game—the action may be confined to an enclosed playing field, but it’s always moving, ping-ponging in unexpected directions and encouraging synapse overload.
The band’s latest—reportedly, the first of five albums they’re planning to pump out this year—is likewise bound to a motif, though this one is as much sonic as structural. Flying Microtonal Banana was the product of Gizzard king Stu Mackenzie acquiring a custom-made guitar modified for microtonal tuning, which allows for intervals smaller than the semitones that govern Western music. And since the new guitar could only be played with similarly tuned instruments, he reportedly paid his bandmates $200 each to also get their gear tricked out with microtonal capabilities. Translation for those who don’t hold a degree in music theory: Australia’s wiggiest band has found a way to hoist its freak flag a few inches higher up the pole. But this time, it flutters in a more gentle breeze.
If the unrelenting Nonagon Infinity turned rock’n’roll into an Iron Man competition, Flying Microtonal Banana is that cool-down grace period your elliptical machine gives you after an hour’s workout. While opener “Rattlesnake” immediately reestablishes the preceding album’s motorik momentum, the pace is tempered—more late-night cruise than rocket to the moon. But even as it maintains a steadier course, the changes in scenery are more dramatic—in between Mackenzie’s chirpy verses about reptilian attacks, the song powers through a fog of stormy synths, staccato guitar pricks, and the brain-scrambling squawks of a Turkish horn-type instrument known as a zurna.
On Nonagon Infinity, the action moved so fast that Mackenzie’s words whizzed by like an out-of-control news ticker spitting out the haziest cosmic jive. He still drops randomly recurring melodies like a pull-string doll with a limited repertoire of phrasing, but Flying Microtonal Banana’s more relaxed vibe and greater sense of space bring his words into sharper focus. As per psych-rock tradition, Mackenzie deals in surrealist imagery, though in this case, those images aren’t the mere product of a chemically clouded mind. “Melting” combines rhythms from ’70s Nigeria with observations on the present-day Arctic (“Toxic air is/Here to scare us/Fatal fumes from/Melting ferrous”). “Open Water” channels anxieties over disappearing coastlines into a marauding, seafaring-fantasy epic, like an updated “Immigrant Song” for Vikings who drive their ships to new lands only discover they’ve been swallowed by rising ocean levels.
Flying Microtonal Banana peaks early with these extended odysseys, before giving way to more conventionally scaled rockers like “Sleep Drifter,” the rare Gizzard track that uses its melody as the foundation for a krautrockin’ jam, rather than the other way around. But as the record rolls on, it starts to resemble an FM dial spun awry. Flying Microtonal Banana serves up brief blasts of spaghetti-western balladry (“Billabong Valley”), acidic Southern blooze (“Anoxia”), and gritty Afro-funk (“Nuclear Fusion”) that are connected only by the chaotic harmonica and zurna bursts that punctuate Mackenzie’s musings. And it becomes increasingly clear that the only difference between a three-minute King Gizzard track and a seven-minute one is where they arbitrarily decide to fade out (sometimes mid-chorus). But if Flying Microtonal Banana’s randomized approach is ultimately less transfixing than Nonagon Infinity’s maniacal focus, it nonetheless shows that, after eight previous albums, this band’s creativity and curiosity knows no bounds, and their singular balance of anarchy and accessibility is still in check. So even if you don’t understand the first thing about microtonality, there’s still plenty of flying banana here to keep you amused.
