Welcome to the Gizzverse A ‘Serialized Essay’ on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
By Tommy ‘puffin’ Megaffin
Introduction
I think it’s safe to say that I’m obsessed with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard.
I first heard of the band in 2019, when I watched Anthony Fantano’s review of their second album of that year, Infest The Rats’ Nest. The band’s name caught my eye, and what Fantano had to say about them piqued my interest. I listened to the album, really liked it, but didn’t think about it much more than that. Planet B and Mars For The Rich got added to one of my playlists, and I had a blast every time they came on. Fast forward all the way to some time in late October or early November 2021, when YouTube decided to recommend the band’s KEXP performance of some of the songs from that very same album. I was blown away. It was nearly twenty minutes of blood-pumping, non-stop, thrash metal action. There were two drummers, three guitar players, and even a goddamn harmonica in the mix.
Then, I spotted a comment on the video that said something along the lines of “I can’t believe this is the same band that made Paper Mâché Dream Balloon”. Sure enough, upon listening to the album’s first track, Sense, I couldn’t believe it was the same band. Once again, I was blown away. It was a couple weeks later that I decided I was going to listen to King Gizzard’s entire discography, and that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. Over the course of two or three days, I sat down and listened to what was then the band’s eighteen studio albums, from 12 Bar Bruise to Butterfly 3000. I was instantly hooked, even tweeting “by the end of 2022 I want to own every single king gizzard album on vinyl” before I even finished the entire journey.
GIF by Inkpendude
Fast forward once again to June 21st, 2022, or the day that I’m writing this introduction. I own eight of the band’s now twenty studio albums on vinyl, with another three on the way. I have tickets to see them in October at L’Olympia in Montreal, and have over eleven thousand plays of their music on streaming, plus all the times I’ve watched and rewatched their music videos and live performances. I’ve had musical fixations before, namely Kanye West and Car Seat Headrest, but neither of those come close to the obsession I have with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. If you follow me on Twitter or ever hang out with me in real life, you are probably already sick of me talking about this band, but I’m not even close to being sick of talking about them.
Shortly after I first listened to their discography for the first time, I decided to write a brief review of each album, mostly to avoid writing an essay for school. Since then my opinions have changed a lot, I’ve dived deeper into the world of King Gizzard, and most importantly they’ve released two new studio albums since then, Made In Timeland and Omnium Gatherum. I have so much to say about this band, their music, their fanbase, and more, so I’ve decided that this time around I’m gonna do more than just review all of their albums. This thing is going to be equal parts critique, analysis, storytelling, and just plain info-dumping, so buckle in and get ready for the story of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, the most exciting band in the world right now.
I’d like to take this time to issue a content warning. King Gizzard is generally a pretty lighthearted band, even when singing about serious issues like climate change, but I’ll also be mentioning and talking about suicide, substance abuse, sexual violence, general violence, and more.
Author’s Notes
June 21st, 2022
Hey! Before I get started with the real meat and potatoes, I’ve got a few things to say. This thing is gonna be absurdly long, and if I only release it when it’s finished it will never see the light of day. So, I’m gonna be releasing Welcome to the Gizzverse in a serialized format, with each chapter coming out whenever it’s ready. I’m also going to keep the chapters updated with any new information I come across, so I’ll use this ‘Author’s Notes’ section to log any post-publication changes I make. I’ll also mark every chapter with the date I started writing it, the date it was originally published, and the date I last updated it. The only exception to this is that I probably won’t update the introduction at all. I could change my mind on that. Also, other miscellaneous notes may also show up here, like progress reports or important announcements the band has made.
Now, to the elephant in the room. Some people may notice something strange. Yes, this is my second go at writing this thing. I started all the way back in January of this year, but I didn’t really like the style I was writing that version in, and I don’t think I did my due diligence when it came to research. I basically want this thing to be a comprehensive guide to all-things-Gizz, so I strive to do a better job this time. I didn’t completely delete that previous version, and I ended up copying and pasting a decent amount from the first couple chapters of it into this one, so they may seem familiar if you had already read it. Thanks for reading everyone.
September 4th, 2022
It’s been a while since I’ve worked on this project, but a recent announcement from the band has reinvigorated me! A few days ago, the band announced that they will be releasing THREE albums in October. My goal is to try to get at least the first three chapters (basically covering their early releases and their first full-blown album) of this thing out before the albums go on pre-order on September 7th. Woo!
September 7th, 2022
The day has come! The names, album art, tracklists, and other information regarding the three October albums has been revealed. On October 7th we’ll get the band’s 21st album: Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, from which the single Ice V was released today as well. On the 12th we’ll get Laminated Denim, a spiritual sequel to Made In Timeland from earlier this year. Finally, on the 28th we’ll get Changes, an album the band has been working on for five whole years. I’m personally most excited for Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, because it has what sounds like the most interesting concept, being based on the seven Greek Modes, while also incorporating that science fiction/fantasy content that is present in most of my favourite Gizz albums.
September 9th, 2022
As I write this I am preparing to publish the first three chapters of this thing, in their new and improved state. It took a couple days longer than I thought, but oh well. So, looking back on the introduction I'd like to demonstrate how long it's taken me. Compared to the eight I mentioned in the introduction, I now own sixteen of the band's studio albums on vinyl. Also, I'm now at almost 14,000 plays according to last.fm. Hopefully the next three chapters won't take as long.
November 17th, 2022
Okay, I have to put this on hiatus. Again.
This project is just too daunting, and I have no motivation to finish it (or even get past the first chapter...) right now. I have several other, smaller King Gizzard projects I want to work on, so look forward to those! One of them will be a more formally-formatted Polygondwanaland essay!
Contents
Chapter One: King Gizzard, Lizard Wizards
The first chapter is about the band itself: its formation, its name, a brief summary of its history, and finally its members, present and former.
Chapter Two: Early Releases
The second chapter covers the band’s releases before their first studio album, including their first two EPs: Anglesea & Willoughby’s Beach.
Chapter Three: 12 Bar Bruise & Flightless
Chapter three is about King Gizzard’s debut studio album, 12 Bar Bruise, as well as the band’s self-owned record label, Flightless.
Last edited by puffin on Fri Nov 18, 2022 1:45 am, edited 3 times in total.
A Brief History of King Gizzard Photo by Jamie Wdziekonski
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are an Australian rock band from Melbourne, Victoria. The band consists of frontman Stu Mackenzie, harmonica player Ambrose Kenny-Smith, lead guitarist Joey Walker, rhythm guitarist Cook Craig, bassist Lucas Harwood, and drummer Michael Cavanagh. Drummer and manager Eric Moore was also in the band from its formation in 2010 until his departure in 2020. King Gizzard are known for exploring many different musical genres which makes it hard to label them anything but a ‘rock band’. They are also known for putting on wild and unique live shows, and for building a prolific discography that includes one remix album, three EPs, five compilations, fourteen live albums, and twenty studio albums.
The band released their first singles in 2010 and their first two EPs, Anglesea and Willoughby’s Beach the following year. 2012 saw the band’s debut studio album, 12 Bar Bruise, released under the band’s own label, Flightless. With 2013 came Eyes Like The Sky and Float Along - Fill Your Lungs, which both built upon the garage rock sound from the previous releases. 2014’s Oddments and I’m In Your Mind Fuzz saw King Gizzard refining their increasingly psychedelic sound and landing on a more international radar. The next year once again came with two albums from the band, being Quarters! and Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. 2016’s Nonagon Infinity would see the band push themselves farther than ever before and being rewarded with international praise, such as a ‘strong 8’ from Anthony Fantano and the ARIA Award for “Best Hard Rock or Heavy Metal Album”.
After being thrust into the international spotlight, a lesser band might play it safe and try to recreate the success of Nonagon Infinity. Instead, King Gizzard decided to promise and then fulfill the promise of releasing five albums in 2017: Flying Microtonal Banana, Murder of the Universe, Sketches of Brunswick East, Polygondwanaland, and Gumboot Soup, all of which are completely different from each other and everything else the band had done before. After taking a well deserved break from releasing albums in 2018, they came back in 2019 with Fishing For Fishies and the thrash metal space opera Infest The Rats’ Nest. 2020 saw the release of several live albums, notably Live In San Francisco ‘16, a concert film called Chunky Shrapnel, two compilations of demos, a compilation of old material called Teenage Gizzard, and a new studio album called K.G.. That album was then followed up by 2021’s L.W., and then came Butterfly 3000 that same year, one of the band’s biggest departures from their original rock sound to date. A remix album called Butterfly 3001 and a vinyl-only studio album called Made in Timeland were released in the beginning of 2022, and then followed by King Gizzard’s first official double album, Omnium Gatherum. In mid-June, the band tweeted out that they were planning on releasing three more albums in 2022, which we're later revealed to be Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, Laminated Denim, and Changes, all set to be released in October 2022.
The Lizard Wizards
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard began as an informal jam band started by a bunch of university friends, or I guess ‘mates’ would be the proper term. The lineup, which began with Stu, Joey, and Eric, was constantly shifting from show to show as they brought in other friends, including members from the other bands they were in at the time. Eventually the lineup was solidified with those three, Ambrose, Cook, Lucas, and Michael. When I first listed the members of the band, I did them a disservice by labeling them harmonica player, bassist, etc. Though the band officially had seven members for most of its history, and now six, it is very rare to find a song with credits for all of them. The way the band records and rehearses is very loose, so all of the members play multiple instruments fairly regularly.
Stu Mackenzie Stu at Bonnaroo in 2015. Photo credit: FilmMagic
Stu Mackenzie is the frontman and lead vocalist of King Gizzard, and does the majority of the writing, mixing, producing, and recording. He has a distinct singing style that involves putting the microphone as close to his mouth as possible, often almost swallowing it as seen in the photo above. He is also known for the ‘WOOs’ and other noises that he interjects into songs, which to me is one of the defining features of the ‘Gizz sound’. Stu plays many instruments, including but not limited to bass, keyboard, flute, and sitar. However, he mostly plays one of a few guitars, each iconic in their own way. My favourite is his black and gold Hagstrom 12, but you’ll also often see his blue Yamaha SG-2A seen in the photo above, his custom-built ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’ made by Zac Eccles, and his recently broken Gibson Holy Explorer.
It’s Stu’s love of fantasy and science-fiction that fuels a lot of the band’s concept albums, and it is probably his insane love of recording music that leads to the sheer amount of albums that the band has released.
“Uh yeah I guess ther- I guess they’re just things sometimes uh you just kinda think of something and then it uh becomes a song before you know it. It’s just you know you just get it in there and you thinking about something and then you you know you are kind thinking about a song and then there’s this music.”
Joey “Walky Jake” Walker is King Gizzard’s lead guitarist, responsible for the funkiest, fastest, and meanest riffs that can be found in the band’s discography. He also writes a good chunk of the music as well, including the band’s most streamed song on Spotify, Work This Time. I really, really like Joey’s songwriting. In my opinion he has the best voice in the band for melancholy songs, and his writing style is so unique and distinct you can often tell what songs he wrote just from their titles. Some of my favourites include Intrasport, This Thing, and Minimum Brain Size. Joey has a handful of iconic guitars, including the Gibson Flying V pictured above, his Gibson SG, and his modified Godin Richmond Series Dorchester, which he calls Dickhead.
Joey has one of the biggest personalities in the band, often being behind the group’s shitposts and funniest clips. Though he messes around, it's very clear that he really knows what he’s talking about when it comes to music, and is arguably the most irreplaceable member of the band when it comes to live performances. Joey also releases electronic music of his own under the name Bullant, and was previously in a band called Love Migrate.
“First things first, let’s talk about microtonal music. Um, what it is, at its core, if you think about, you know… I don’t know, really. Nah, just essentially if you ever think about steps between- you have a scale, you have octaves, you have strings… That’s pretty much it.”
Ambrose Kenny-Smith Ambrose, photo by Jury Hiensch
Ambrose Kenny-Smith, or Amby, plays harmonica, keyboard, and percussion for Gizz. Although he probably doesn’t write as many songs as Joey, I’d estimate that he has the second most amount of vocals after Stu. Songs like Billabong Valley and Cut Throat Boogie are standouts in the band’s discography because of how unique Amby’s voice is, and in my opinion his singing is only getting better with time. He has even begun rapping under the alias “Shrimpomaniac” on recent King Gizzard songs like Smoke & Mirrors, The Grim Reaper, and alongside Stu in Sadie Sorceress.
It sounds weird, but I’d argue that having an almost-dedicated harmonica player is one of the core things that makes Gizz the band that they are. It's a constant sound throughout all of their albums, even on their thrash metal record Infest The Rat’s Nest, and helps give them a unique identity. Amby is also the lead vocalist and harmonica player for The Murlocs, and used to be in a band called Sambrose Automobile.
“I’m Ambrose, strangers call me Kenny. This is my MIDI.”
Cook Craig Cook, photo credit: Martin Philbey/Redferns
Cook Craig, aka Cookie, aka Cookiedog69 is King Gizzard’s rhythm guitarist, though often also plays bass and keyboard. Cookie is the last of the four ‘singing members’ of Gizz, and has written songs like The Garden Goblin and Time = Fate. The songs he writes tend to be some of the band’s most lighthearted, and I have a soft spot for a lot of them. Unfortunately he doesn’t sing live as much as he used to. Out of all the members of the band, Cookie is the one who changes his look most frequently and drastically, to the point where you can date footage just based on what his hairdo is like, with my personal favourite being the bald-with-a-beard look he had going on in 2018. The main guitars he uses are his custom-built ‘Blue Boy’ made by Zac Eccles, a Rickenbacker 620, and my personal favourite, his Rickenbacker 330. Cook also releases solo music under the name Pipe-eye, and has been the bassist for The Murlocs since 2013.
“Really… kooky kinda stuff, I guess I take a lot of influence from that”
Lucas Harwood Lucas, photo credit: Amber Zbitnoff Knecht
Lucas Harwood, born Lucas Skinner, and often called Lukey, is Gizz’s bassist. As a father, Lucas is the least active of the current members of the band when it comes to recording, but tours with them full time. Thanks to Stu’s amazing mixing, you can always hear just how great of a bass player Lucas is, even in a band with three guitar players and two drummers. Lucas often plays one of a few Fender Mustang basses, but also has a custom-built, five string microtonal bass made by Zac Eccles. He’s probably the most chill out of all the King Gizzard boys, but maybe that’s just because he’s a father, as there is some old concert footage of him going absolutely crazy on stage. Lucas was previously in the bands Atolls, Sambrose Automobile, and The Houses.
“Alright! What’s up Gizzheads, it’s Lukey here… Look, I’m no wakey Jake…”
Michael Cavanagh Michael, photo from his bandcamp page
Michael Cavanagh, or Cavs, is currently King Gizzard’s sole drummer, and back when they had two drummers he was considered the lead drummer. As far as I know he wrote basically all the drum parts and sometimes recorded both of the drums parts in the studio, while the second drummer, Eric, mostly just played live. He is insanely talented and his crazy playing is another one of the band’s signature traits. On the surface, Cavs seems like one of the more chill members of the band but I find that he fits perfectly in with Amby and Joey as the biggest jokers of the group. He recently released his debut solo album, CAVS, under an alias of the same name, and has also played drums for some Pipe-eye music.
“This is Michaels- Ca- Cavs- Cavs- Cavanagh of Flying Michael Toenail Cabana.”
Eric Moore Eric, photo credit: Mariano Regidor/Redferns
Eric Moore was King Gizzard’s manager, thereminist, percussionist, and second drummer until his departure from the band in August 2020 to focus on running his record label, Flightless. Eric has always been a bit of a punching bag for both the band and its fanbase. In the liner notes of the vinyl for Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, he is credited for “nothing”. In one of the band’s most memed moments, he lamented having his ‘kick drum privileges taken away’ in the making-of video Peeling the Flying Microtonal Banana. This is of course all in good fun, but unfortunately some fans take it a bit too seriously and straight up talk shit about the guy. Maybe Eric isn’t as amazing of a drummer as Cavs is, but in context this means absolutely nothing. While being a touring and recording member of the band for a whole decade, Eric was also the band’s manager and ran their label, which also represents over a dozen other bands. And calling him a bad drummer would just be lying. Watch any of the band's live performances and he is keeping right up with Cavs and kicking ass. I have nothing but immense respect for the guy. Before Gizz, Eric was in the bands Love Migrate and Buried Horses. More recently, he has gone on tour with the band Shannon & The Clams.
“Think my kick drum got taken away, cause I… lost my privileges.”
I’d also like to give a shoutout to Jason Galea. He’s basically an additional member of the band, producing most of King Gizzard’s art and many of their videos. He also creates the visuals that form the backgrounds of many of the band’s live shows, having produced over four hundred of them according to his website.
Further Introduction to King Gizzard
Now that I’ve given a brief overview of the band’s musical history and gone over each of its members, I’d like to talk a bit more about the band before diving into the music itself. It goes without saying that one of the most striking things about the band is their name: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. I’ve actually seen a lot of hate for the band's name over the years online. One person even submitted it for Anthony Fantano’s Worst Band Names of All Time video. Anthony defended the band, saying that who cares if they have a silly name, it's not like they take themselves too seriously. I completely agree and I’ve always thought it's an amazing name, and I may have never even listened to them in the first place if they had a more ‘normal’ name. However, it can be a mouthful so, as you’ve already seen, I’ll mostly be referring to the band by various shortened versions such as ‘King Gizzard’, ‘Gizz’, or just ‘the band’ or ‘the boys’.
Stu originally wanted to name the band ‘Gizzard Gizzard’, and someone else wanted it to be ‘Lizard King’, an homage to Jim Morrison of The Doors. They compromised and came up with ‘King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’ at the very last minute, which is perfect because it's just so silly, memorable, and fits the band’s music perfectly. I think the three parts of the name can actually be used to categorize three types of music that Gizz has made since 2010. To me, “Gizzard” perfectly encapsulates their early discography. Rough but fun rock albums like 12 Bar Bruise or Float Along - Fill Your Lungs. “Lizard” perfectly describes some of their weirder albums, like Flying Microtonal Banana or Eyes Like the Sky. “Wizard” applies to their albums that lean the most into fantasy and sci-fi like Nonagon Infinity, Murder of the Universe, and Polygondwanaland.
I do recognize the name can be off-putting for some, as it can make King Gizzard seem like a joke or a gimmick band. I’ve seen countless YouTube comments saying things along the line of ‘I’ve known about these guys for years but never listened because of the silly name, but I’m so glad I finally did’. However, I think you’ll struggle to find a fan that doesn’t love the name, even if they were hesitant about it at first. Two of my other favourite bands are Car Seat Headrest and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, so I think it’s pretty clear that I like bands with silly names.
Photo by Jason Galea
As I mentioned previously, Gizz are also really well known for their prolific discography, and the way they’ve explored so many different genres, both inside and outside of rock music. The band has released twenty studio albums in just over half as many years, and are now promising to release five albums in one year for the second time. Artists that release material this frequently are often met with the ‘quality over quantity’ criticism, and though I believe it’s valid to have that worry when it comes to King Gizzard, I’m not really convinced that it applies here. All of the boys clearly have so much passion for what they do, and it's very clear to me that they aren’t doing it just for the money, as evidenced by their ‘bootlegger’ program which I’ll talk about more in a later chapter. I will admit that I am extremely biased, but I wouldn’t call a single Gizz album anything less than ‘good’, as each is oozing with love and effort.
It also helps that each album is so different from the last, due to the band’s genre-hopping tendencies. King Gizzard have done garage rock, psychedelic rock of varying intensities, jazz rock, folk, hard rock, kraut rock, progressive rock, blues rock, thrash metal, doom metal, dance music, psychedelic pop, hip-hop, and more. That’s not even mentioning the band’s exploration into microtonal tuning, or the songs and albums that I don’t even know how to describe in terms this brief. Every album is so unique and different from all the others, yet they also each have that similar King Gizzard factor to them, which keeps the discography recognizable and cohesive. A lot of the band’s music is also connected in an overarching narrative known as 'The Gizzverse'. The Gizzverse is mainly discussed in relation to the albums I'm In Your Mind Fuzz, Nonagon Infinity, Murder of the Universe, and Polygondwanaland, but I am of the opinion that it stretches a lot further than that. I will have an entire chapter dedicated to the Gizzverse later, which I think will be a lot of fun.
I think one of the band’s strengths which allows them to craft a discography so large, diverse, and consistently fantastic is that their process seems to be highly collaborative. Though Stu writes, composes, and produces the majority of the music, he doesn’t overpower the rest of the band. King Gizzard is an environment and platform where every single member can shine and share their own unique love for music. In the band's What's In My Bag? video from Amoeba, each of the boys pick out albums from so many different genres and parts of the world, and you can hear that blend of influences so clearly in their music. I love that video a lot, it's so cool to see them each talk so passionately about the material that inspires them. Watching that video was actually also the first time I heard all the band members speak and introduce themselves, so it is definitely a video I am quite fond of. It's also hilarious that Stu just picks out a bunch of books, and shows how it's not just other music that inspires the band.
With a discography that large and diverse, it can definitely be a bit daunting to get into. I regularly see Reddit posts asking ‘what album should I listen to first’ or ‘what album is most like this other album’. If you’re reading this and have already decided that you want to listen to King Gizzard, I’ve got a few different methods for how to do so. Firstly, there is quite a famous flowchart made by u/SchizoidGod that I think does a pretty great job. It begins with the album I’m In Your Mind Fuzz and goes from there, even mentioning other bands with similar sounds. Though I disagree with some of the choices for the ‘key tracks’, I think the chart is really well made and the connections between albums make a lot of sense for the most part. There is also the wonderful website https://get-into-gizz.com/ which presents a similar flowchart in a more user-friendly way.
You could also do what I did and listen to the whole discography in order, though, if you don’t like their earlier, rougher stuff, I can understand this method not really working for everyone. You could also just listen to whatever album’s art or title catches your attention and go from there. I think combining this method with the flowchart or the website is a good idea, because 'Mind Fuzz' might not be a great starting point for everyone. Finally, I actually think the best way to get hooked on King Gizzard is to watch some of their live performances, especially those from KEXP. This is what got me into the band, and I think getting to actually see the different members of the band as they play is a great way to begin a journey into any band’s discography.
Now, let’s get started with the music, shall we?
Created: June 21st, 2022
Published: September 9th 2022
Last Edited: September 4th, 2022
2010 Singles
In November 2010, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their first ever single, Hey There / Ants & Bats. At this point the band had been playing small shows around Melbourne for a little while, and had recorded at least a handful of the songs they would play. The single had a very limited release on CD, and wasn’t released digitally until its inclusion on the Teenage Gizzard compilation in 2020, though it was unofficially uploaded to Youtube in 2016, likely by one of the CD’s original purchasers. It was briefly on streaming services after the release of the compilation but was removed shortly after, once again only becoming available physically or on Youtube.
Hey There / Ants & Bats on CD, from Discogs
Hey There is a simple garage rock track that is surprisingly psychedelic compared to future early releases like Willoughby's Beach, thanks to its use of vocal reverb. The song begins with a count-in, which is fairly common in King Gizzard’s music. A steady and simple bassline makes up the core of the song, with blown out guitars coming in on top of it sparingly during the verses and heavily during the choruses. One guitar seems to mimic the bass, while the other plays bright chords. This is before either Amby or Cookie joined the band, so there is no third guitar or harmonica present here, as with most other releases until the aforementioned Willoughby’s Beach.
Hey There’s lyrical content goes back and forth between professing love for a girl and the narrator asking the girl what’s in his hair. A lot of early Gizz songs feature many of the members singing together, but to me this one sounds like it’s only Stu. Genius says the first line of each verse is “Hey there, hey there”, but I’m convinced that it’s actually “Hey girl, hey there”. The song ends with a whole bunch of feedback noise that trails away until the recording abruptly cuts off. Hey There is nothing to write home about but I do enjoy how psychedelic it sounds and the bassline and drums work well and get my head bobbing just a bit.
The single’s ‘B-side’ is Ants & Bats, which is a special little song because it’s the first example of Stu’s ‘WOOs’ in King Gizzard’s discography, and it has a lot of them. Similarly to Hey There, the bassline is very prominent in the mix and makes up the core of the song. Lukey’s playing actually sounds super menacing here and I love it. The beginning of the song almost sounds like the start of a villain’s theme. Like in the previous song, one of the guitars plays along with the bass while the other plays contrastingly bright chords on top of them. I have no way of knowing but I would assume that Joey is playing the riff while Stu is playing the chords. The vocals in this song are much more subdued than in Hey There, and don’t have the same reverb.
The lyrics of Ants & Bats are some of the strangest in the band’s entire discography. The first verse makes absolutely no sense to me other than the reference to the song’s title, and the second is about a dirty stuffed bear that the narrator seems to find comforting, which is just weird. By the way, when I use terms like ‘the narrator’ rather than just saying the name of the vocalist, I’m doing that to separate the real person from the character in the song, sort of like what’s done a lot in poetic analysis. I hope Stu doesn’t actually find comfort in a dirty stuffed animal, I think it’s just a random lyric he made up for the song... I really, really hope so anyways. The track’s chorus, which is just “WOO” over and over again, almost sounds like a third guitar. After the second chorus, the song fizzles out and ends.
Though I think the bassline of Ants & Bats is the best part of this single, I think Hey There is the better song of the two simply because it’s more catchy, which is pretty important for a simple garage rock tune. Mostly due to the understandably poor recording quality, given that the boys were just university students messing around at this time, these aren’t songs I return to with any regularity. However, I think performed live, these songs could be pretty fun.
The following month in December, the band released their second single, Sleep / Summer, also on CD. Like the previous single, it was also not available digitally until its inclusion on Teenage Gizzard, and was unofficially uploaded to Youtube by the same account.
Sleep / Summer cover art, from Discogs. “King & Gizzard The Lizard Wizard”
The first song off the single, Sleep, is far bouncier and less noisy than either Hey There or Ants & Bats. The subdued yet echoey guitars are more of the focus here, rather than the bass which is buried a bit deeper in the mix. The vocals are also more washed out, and almost whispery at times. This is ironic given that Sleep has a little more lyrical content than either of the previous songs. The track sees the singer lamenting the fact that his partner is always wanting to sleep in, while he wants to get up early and enjoy the day. It seems Stu’s mentality has changed a bit, since years later he wrote the song I’m Sleepin’ In, from 2017’s Gumboot Soup. This track also features more WOOs, though Stu’s a little more reserved than in Ants & Bats.
Summer makes up the single’s ‘B-side’, and to me is easily the best song off of these two 2010 releases. It has the cleanest and most compelling guitar playing of the four songs, being the most ‘surfy’ of all the riffs. This is also the band’s first song that isn’t in 4/4, being instead in 3/4. There isn’t anything too fancy about this time signature, but seeing that King Gizzard will later be known for rarely sticking to traditional 4/4 counting, I think it’s cool to see the origin of that. I’m really bad at recognizing time signatures, so I’ll be heavily relying on this awesome post by u/Narrow-Metal-8470: https://www.reddit.com/r/KGATLW/comment ... ignatures/.
I think that Summer is also the catchiest of the 2010 songs. The song’s lyrics are just “It’s hot, it’s mean, summer, to me / Green grass, won’t last, sky blue, me too” over and over again, but I think this is easily the best writing on these singles. These lines were later interpolated in the song Muddy Water, which is also from Gumboot Soup. Stu is clearly conflicted about Summer, on one hand finding the season too hot, but also being sad that the green grass and blue sky will soon disappear into Winter. All in all, Summer is probably the only song out of the four that I would actually put on in front of other people.
So, those are the four songs from King Gizzard’s first two releases. As I said, Summer is easily my favourite out of the four, but I still don’t really think any of them are really anything to write home about. It would definitely be interesting to know what these songs would sound like with cleaner recordings, or played live with the band’s current style like they do for some of their other early work, but for now let’s move on.
Anglesea & Trench Foot
On the 18th of March, 2011, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their debut EP, titled Anglesea. The release is named after the small town that Stu Mackenzie grew up in, and consists of four songs that the band had been playing at shows throughout 2010 and the early parts of 2011. In fact, according to the Teenage Gizzard page on the band’s website, the songs from Anglesea were actually recorded sometime in 2010, alongside Hey There, Ants & Bats, Sleep, and Summer. The EP consists of four tracks, which total at just about twelve and a half minutes.
Anglesea cover art by Katie Hagebols
Stu had this to say about the EP on the band’s website:
“Hmmm… OK heres what I can remember…
We’d been playing a lot of shows around Melbourne and Geelong leading up to this recording. Literally every show we could get - parties, warehouses, pubs, clubs, basements, drains. Most of them were to nobody, but they were so fun it didn’t matter. We only had a handful of songs, but we’d play them all for a really long time and hope nobody noticed. For some reason at the time, we didn’t believe in rehearsal. We thought; the songs just have to be simple enough that any person with a passing knowledge of music could get on stage and jam. Which is what happened pretty regularly. Usually a spectacular failure. We certainly didn’t feel like a real band. I think that’s because we all had other bands at the time which seemed more important and more likely to go somewhere.
Anyway, back to the EP. One night, we borrowed a bunch of mics, set them up in my parents garage and recorded that handful of songs we’d been playing live. I remember googling ‘Glyn Johns Method’. We really had no idea what we were doing. I don't think Cookie or Amby were in the band yet. This is a weird one to write about. I don't consider it cannon. Don’t listen to it - it’s fake. Love Stu”
Tracklist: 1. Eddie Cousin
2. Fried
3. Good To Me
4. Tomb/Beach
Recorded by King Gizzard
Mixed by Stu Mackenzie
Mastered by Alex Braithwaite
Quick side-note before I get started with the first track, I actually really love Anglesea’s cover art. As far as I know it's the only release to leave off the ‘Lizard Wizard’ part of the band’s name, and I find the whole thing really endearing. Anyways, the first song from the EP is Eddie Cousin, a song infamous for its extremely simple lyrics, which are the simplest of any song in the band’s discography. The entire song only includes the words ‘I’, ‘say’, and ‘oh’, making it the perfect contrast to some of King Gizzard’s more complicated and sophisticated tracks like Murder of the Universe and Horology.
King Gizzard playing Eddie Cousin, live on TV
Despite the lack of substantial lyrics, Eddie Cousin is actually a decently catchy song when compared to many of its peers. It’s also the only song off of Anglesea with any live footage, as the band performed it on TV. This performance was done after the band’s lineup had solidified, and thus features the third guitar of Cookie and the harmonica of Ambrose, which adds another layer to the song’s instrumental. The TV version is definitely the ‘definitive’ version of the song. At the end they all go a bit crazy and jam out, which is easily the best part of either version.
About a minute and a half into the studio version, the main vocals are backed up with a higher pitched background vocal. Usually it’s Ambrose who does higher vocals but since he wasn’t in the band at this point I’m not sure who this is. It’s worth noting that unlike the 2010 singles, for the most part the songs on Anglesea are sung as a group. It’s impossible to know who exactly is singing, but I would assume that at this point it is Stu, Joey, and Lucas. In the TV version, Ambrose and Cookie are also singing, and that higher pitched, offset background vocal doesn’t really exist.
Instrumentally, Eddie Cousin is a lot more danceable than the 2010 singles. Its surfy bassline is great, and the main guitar riff is varied enough to keep things a little more interesting. The band also plays with the different elements of the composition a bit more here, sometimes stripping the song back to just the bass and the drums, and other times just the guitars and the drums. Speaking of drums, there isn’t anything crazy yet but I think Cavs’ playing is decently improved over the band’s previous releases. Eric isn’t playing a drum kit of his own just yet, that won’t happen until Gizz’s third album, Float Along - Fill Your Lungs. For now he is supporting Cavs by playing percussion, which admittedly is hard for my ears to pick out as separate from the drums. Interestingly enough, the song begins with a single bar of 3/4, then two bars of 4/4, then a single bar of 5/4, and then the rest of the song is in 4/4. The rest of Anglesea is entirely in 4/4.
The next track is Fried, which has some hints of the western themed garage rock the band will go on to explore in Eyes Like The Sky. A driving bassline is the core of this track, and it shines even more because of the stripped back drums. It honestly sounds like they didn’t even use a kit for this song, and just used hand percussion. Vocally, the first half of the song is an extended refrain of ‘Hey, ey hey ey yo’, with some WOOs thrown in for good measure. When the verse finally kicks in, it sounds to me like Stu is singing alone, but Joey repeats what he sings back to him after each line. However, that’s just my best guess, it’s pretty hard to tell with these old recordings. Fried is probably my least favourite track on the EP, but it does make me wonder what Eyes Like The Sky would sound like with vocals, so it gets a couple bonus points for that. At least it ends with a WOO, like all songs should.
Angelsea’s penultimate song is Good To Me, which is about the narrator telling a girl that she isn’t treating him well. This song stands out on the EP for two reasons. Firstly, it has the clearest vocals, so much so that it actually caught me off guard after listening to Fried over and over again. From what I can tell, Stu sings the main lines of “Girl hear what I say” and “You ain’t good to me” on his own, and then is joined by the rest of the band every fourth time. In the latter half of the song, an offset, higher pitched background vocal parrots Stu’s lines. Again, since Amby wasn’t in the band at this point, at least according to Stu’s memory and backed up by the lack of harmonica on the EP, I would guess that it is Joey.
Secondly, Good To Me uses swung eighth notes, where essentially in a pair of two eighth notes, the first is twice as long as the second. All the music theory I once knew has basically left my brain in the last few years, so I’m gonna leave it at that. What this means for the song is that it gives it a bouncier feel that is really obvious during the verses. Both of these factors make the song the catchiest from the EP, as well as my overall favourite. I love the minimal bassline, and the high pitched guitar riff that follows the second verse is great. Compared to Eddie Cousin, it's also really easy to distinguish Cavs’ drumming and Eric’s percussion playing on this song, which is always nice. To me, Good To Me is the band’s best song prior to their second EP, Willoughby’s Beach.
The final and longest song from Anglesea is Tomb/Beach. While the last song may be my favourite, it’s not by much because I think this one is the most interesting. It’s a lot slower than the rest of the EP, and that, along with a healthy dose of reverb, helps give the track a more psychedelic feel. The song also has the best drumming on Anglesea, especially when the song picks up after each refrain. The group vocals are back, and have a really nice harmony, especially during the aforementioned refrains.
The two parts of the title refer to the two halves of the song. Musically they are the same, but have different lyrical themes. The first half of the song is hard to decipher. The refrains have the narrator explain that they are in their tomb, presumably dead. However, the verses are more of a mystery: “Lie in the whirl / Makes you hurt / Lie in the sky / Makes you high”. The second half of the song is simpler, with the narrator describing going to the beach with their significant other. It’s unclear whether or not the two halves are meant to be connected to each other in any way. The word ‘whirl’ could be short for whirlpool which would make sense, but I can’t think of anything more than that.
Tomb/Beach ends with a WOO before the instrumental collapses in on itself into a cacophony of feedback noise, and then abruptly ends to finish off Anglesea. All in all, this first EP is definitely the band’s weakest official release, but that’s sort of to be expected. I think my biggest takeaway from Anglesea is that as simple and rough as it is, it still sounds like a King Gizzard record. It may just be because of the WOOs or the washed out vocals, but even this early on in their careers, the boys are already managing to figure out some of their signature elements that will stick with them throughout a lot of their material going forward. Once again, my favourite songs are Good To Me and Tomb/Beach, but I think all four bring something unique to the table and make Anglesea a pretty solid first EP.
Just over a month after Anglesea’s release, and a day after my 10th birthday, King Gizzard released a new single called Trench Foot, their first release to have been recorded in 2011. Accompanying the song was a YouTube video that used footage from the 80s TV show V: The Final Battle. The clip shows the character Robin giving birth to twins: a human and an alien baby, which resembles a lizard due to its green skin. This is most likely a reference to the band’s name, with the human baby being King Gizzard, and the alien baby being The Lizard Wizard. Trench Foot is the very first Gizz song to feature Ambrose on the harmonica, so that’s pretty cool and really brings the song to another level compared to some of the other songs released around this time. The term ‘trench foot’ refers to a condition first observed in the First World War, when soldiers’ feet would become infected and decay due to being wet for too long.
Stu sings the verse of the song alone, it being “Light those up / On my mind / Now you think / All the time”. My best guess is that this is referring to smoking a joint and getting lost in one’s thoughts, as one tends to do while high. The others join him in singing “Ay ay ay ay ay ay ay” in yet another quintessential early King Gizzard style chorus. Other than the harmonica, the rest of the song is instrumentally very straight forward. The bass, drums, and guitars are all pretty in sync with each other throughout the whole song as they play a relentless, constant, driving rhythm. The song ends just as the clip freezes on a ‘To Be Continued’ screen, possibly as a teaser for the band’s second EP.
From the same TV performance as Eddie Cousin, there also exists a short clip of the band attempting to play Trench Foot. They make it about twelve seconds into the song before Eric hits his cymbal a little bit too hard and knocks it over onto Cavs’ drum kit, which he valiantly tries to play through for a few seconds before giving up and the band stops playing. Funnily enough, this clip is uploaded to Gizz’s official YouTube channel, and still exists after all these years.
Willoughby's Beach
On October 21st, 2011, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their second EP, Willoughby's Beach. Being the second major release for the band that year, after Anglesea, this record set the stage for Gizz’s tendency to pretty much always release more than one project each year. Willoughby’s Beach is also a lot more substantial than previous releases, with its nine tracks bringing it to just under twenty three minutes long. The EP is named after an area near Deniliquin, where Eric and Cavs are from.
Willoughby’s Beach original cover art by Ican harem, an Indonesian friend of Stu’s. The art was later changed slightly when the EP was repressed but streaming services still tend to use the old one.
Here’s what Stu had to say about Willoughby’s Beach on the band’s website:
“I reckon this was the first real thing we did. Amby and Cookie had just joined after a couple of jumping jam sessions. The rest of us were starting to gel. Feeling like a real band, we went into a real studio… Well kind of. It was recorded in a huge warehouse filled with music gear (some working, most not), mannequins and cats. Supercharged on redbull, ciggies, beer and body odour we smacked this out in two days. Truth be told, we actually tried really hard to record this ourselves, but having only a few microphones between us and insanely limited knowledge of how on earth to record a 7 piece band, the recordings sounded umm… shit… Anyways, the warehouse session was a good one. I’m still proud of how feral this record is. Hope you can hear the stench. Love, Stu”
Tracklist 1. Danger $$$
2. Black Tooth
3. Lunch Meat
4. Crookedile
5. Let It Bleed
6. Dead-Beat
7. Dustbin Fletcher
8. Stoned Mullet
9. Willoughby’s Beach
Produced by Paul Maybury and Stu Mackenzie
Recorded by Paul Maybury and Stu Mackenzie
Mixed by Paul Maybury
Mastered by Joseph Carra
The EP’s opener Danger $$$ is an immediate message to listeners that King Gizzard have upped their game from previous releases for this one. Though still lo-fi and raw, the recording quality and mixing is significantly better here than on Anglesea and the other singles. Because of this, it’s a lot easier to distinguish between the different instruments, and also puts focus on the band’s old school style hard-panning. At the beginning of the song we hear one guitar in our left ear, then a second guitar in our right ear, and then the bass, third guitar and the drums in the center, all at a fairly slow tempo. Then suddenly, the tempo explodes and the group vocals appear in the center. Once the harmonica shows up, it’s also focused in the right ear. King Gizzard uses hard-panning a lot in their mixing, and it helps them achieve that vintage style that they’re going for.
Footage of Gizz playing Danger $$$ in 2011, though the audio is just from the studio version. Love when Eric breaks the tambourine and just says fuck it and starts wacking on a drum.
Speaking of vocals, they are noticeably clearer on Willoughby’s Beach than on previous releases, and are more prominent in the mix. They are still generally quieter than the instruments as per Gizz’s style, but they aren’t overpowered. Lyrically, Danger $$$ is very simple, consisting of “Danger money, danger money / Danger money, I want danger money” repeated over and over again, just sometimes switched up to “Danger money, danger funny!”. At the end of each repetition, the band lets out a great “OHH”, which is then followed by Ambrose coming in and shredding on the harmonica, which is interjected by several more WOOs and OHHs.
I love the way that the boys play with tempo in this track. The song starts out slow, then explodes into a relentless storm of noise that is faster and crazier than anything from the previous releases. Then, in the last forty seconds or so of this brief song, the song slows down again, while staying noisy and unforgiving on the ears, in a good way. This is definitely the first song in King Gizzard’s discography that I can’t help but headbang to.
Willoughby’s Beach’s second song is Black Tooth, which is a little more laid back than the ultra-aggressive opening track, but a lot more catchy and danceable. So catchy in fact that the chorus reportedly “brought the house” down at a show the night of the EP’s release. Black Tooth was also the first single released from the EP, being released on YouTube in June of 2011. The video is just a clip of elephants walking passed through what are probably a bunch of windows movie maker effects to make it look trippy.
Black Tooth played live in Philadelphia in 2015
The fastest part of Black Tooth is the opening guitar riff, before it slows down for the rest of the song. The tempo, along with the group vocals give the chorus a bit of an anthemic feel, like it would be chanted by the crowd at a soccer game. Speaking of the group vocals, they are a little more separated here, with Stu in the center and the others panned out to the left and the right. To clarify, when I’ve been talking about ‘group vocals’, I don’t just mean that Stu is singing and the rest of them are singing backup vocals, I mean that they are all in sync. They do this for most songs in their early releases, especially during choruses but sometimes during the whole song, like in this track.
The lyrics for Black Tooth are a bit strange but straightforward. The narrator sings about his parents scolding him for talking in his sleep and not brushing his teeth. C’mon boys, you're Australian, not British! The chorus is a simple, yet very catchy, repetition of “Ey-oh-ah / Ey-oh-I go”, followed by “Ey-ey-ey-ey”, so it’s somewhat reminiscent of Eddie Cousin from Anglesea.
Amby, Cookie, Joey, and Stu from the band’s performance of the entire Willoughby’s Beach EP at the Meredith Music Festival in 2011. Photo by Ben Loveridge.
The EP’s third and shortest track is Lunch Meat, which could be seen as being narrated by the significant other from Sleep, as lyrically the song just consists of “They make me get up in the mornin’, mornin’, mornin’, mornin’” repeated seven times. The song’s title seems completely unrelated at first, but given that the previous song mentioned the narrator’s parents, we can also view the song as being about parents getting a kid up for school. Thus, “Lunch Meat” could refer to making lunch in the morning for school. It may be a reach, but it’s all I got. Interestingly, the 2018 vinyl release of Willoughby’s Beach does not include this song’s lyrics.
The song itself is faster than Black Tooth, but not quite as aggressive as Danger $$$. From what I can tell, Lunch Meat is the first time Eric plays the theremin on a Gizz track, also making it their first song with an ‘unconventional’ instrument. Theremins are very interesting instruments because you don’t need to touch them to play them. They have two antennas, one for volume and one for pitch. Moving your hands around the antennas lets you manipulate both, giving off a sound that can easily be mistaken for feedback from the guitars but can obviously be controlled much more easily.
The end of the song dissolves into a mess of feedback noise and reverb, which flows directly into the EPs fourth track, Crookedile. This song has the meanest bass riff on the record, resembling the one from Ants & Bats but sped up a fair amount. Its name is a portmanteau of ‘crooked’ and ‘crocodile’, and may allude to the lizard-like creature on the EP’s cover. The narrator of the song is pleading to someone to “Just say God is on your side”. I believe this is sarcastic, mocking the tendency for imperialists throughout history to justify their actions by saying that they are on the side of God. Stu is quite anti-religion, so using ‘crooked’ in the title of a song about religion seems pretty fitting. The song ends triumphantly, with a series of WOOs.
The band playing Crookedile live in 2012. You can see Eric playing the theremin as he squirms around on the floor like the little freak that he is! Also, while Amby is playing harmonica in this version, for the life of me I cannot hear it on the studio recording.
Next up is Willoughby’s Beach’s slowest and longest song, Let It Bleed, which is named after The Rolling Stones’ album of the same name. King Gizzard will later sample the intro to a song from that album at the beginning of Her And I (Slow Jam 2) from 2014’s I’m In Your Mind Fuzz. This is the record’s chill love song, lyrically consisting of simply “I want to see my love bird / Want to see my love bird again” This whole track, from the drums to the harmonica is soaked in reverb, giving it that psychedelic feel.
Let It Bleed is also the only song on the EP to put the focus on acoustic guitars, rather than electric guitars, though one of the latter is still used. Complementing the slower and softer style, Cavs’ drumming is also more subdued. Something interesting about this song is that I find that the reverbed-out harmonica actually sort of fills in the gap left behind by the lack of electric guitars, almost having a short solo in the middle of the track. Let It Bleed is one of my favourites on Willoughby’s Beach because it’s so different from the rest.
The EP’s sixth track and second single, Dead-Beat, brings back the aggression from Danger $$$. The ascending chord progression here really builds a sense of anticipation like something is about to happen, which compliments the song thematically. Dead-Beat describes the narrator getting in a fight, being punched in the face, and enjoying it: “And I’m all happy / ‘Cause my nose is bleedin’ all over the place”.
Dead-Beat video by Sydrow Productions
The video for the song, which was released two days before the EP, is sort of the band’s first proper music video, since there is footage of the band playing placed between random clips of animals and landscapes. The video was made by Syd Row, who would later film the music video for the song Head On / Pill. Also like Danger $$$, the band plays with the tempo a little bit in Dead-Beat. Around two thirds of the way through the song, it slows down considerably for an extended instrumental outro.
The seventh song on the EP is Dustbin Fletcher, a play on Dustin Fletcher, an Australian rules footballer. Similar to how the aggressive Danger $$$ led into the more catchy and laid-back Black Tooth, this song is also a lot more feel-good and fun than Dead-Beat. Dustbin Fletcher is simply about getting high and having a good time, which is complimented by the bouncy, surfy riffs and the sustained vocals throughout the track. The chorus is just Stu going “oh oh oh…” while other members of the band go “ooooh” underneath him.
Willoughby’s Beach’s penultimate track is the somewhat-punky sounding Stoned Mullet. The song’s lyrical substance continues where Dustbin Fletcher left off, being about getting high and jacking off. The song’s title is a play on the Australian term “stunned mullet” which basically means being in complete bewilderment, with the word stoned implying that said bewilderment is a result of being high. I haven’t been mentioning it much because there isn’t really a reason to, but like most of the songs from their early discography, Stoned Mullet is sung mostly in the ‘group vocals’ style, once again giving it that anthemic feeling.
Instrumentally, the most interesting and memorable thing going on here is Amby’s harmonica solo that takes over the song after the first chorus. The end of the song, which is one of the shortest in this tracklist, is capped off with one of the band members loudly burping into the microphone, perhaps from all that aforementioned Red Bull and beer.
The EP ends with its title track, Willoughby’s Beach. Being one of the slower cuts from the project, the song is about the conflicted feelings, or outright denial, one can have when first becoming romantically interested in someone. “Just because I like you / It doesn’t mean I like you”. The track is one of the catchiest on Willoughby’s Beach, because of its slower tempo and relatively clear vocals. Like a lot of early King Gizzard songs, the ‘chorus’ here is basically just Stu making “ooh” sounds, but in a way that is genuinely catchy. I find that compared to many of the other songs from this EP, the title track has more of a focus on Stu’s voice, though the group vocals are still present here for the verses.
A performance of Willoughby’s Beach (the song) on FBi Radio Sydney from May 9th, 2012. Video filmed and edited by The Brianstorm Project. This version is a lot more chaotic than the studio version, and I like it a lot.
Instrumentally, the song is largely more of the same. Two of the guitars chug along in a fairly consistent surf-rock groove interrupted by various slides and drones, while a third makes various screeching noises throughout the background of the song. I think that Cavs’ drumming on this track is also one of the highlights, especially those fills that usher in the chaos after each chorus. The song ends as it should, with a ‘woo!’, and with it, Willoughby’s Beach comes to an abrupt stop.
Willoughby’s Beach (the EP) certainly feels, as Stu himself has said, like King Gizzard’s first ‘real’ release. It helps that it's the first one that’s on streaming services, but it also has this substantial feeling to it that Anglesea and the other singles just don’t have. Again, this is largely because it’s on streaming services but this is the first Gizz project that I listen to on a regular basis. Songs like Danger $$$, Black Tooth, Crookedile, Let It Bleed, and the title track all live in playlists that I listen to on an almost daily basis, and for good reason. Yes it’s rough, yes it’s lofi, and yes it is almost mind-numbingly simple, but Willoughby’s Beach is a really raw, fun time if you can get past all of that. It helps that the whole thing is only twenty-two minutes long.
I’ll leave you with this performance of the title track from Brisbane in 2021, as I think it shows the potential that these early tracks have when combined with the talent and resources that the band has a decade later. Now, onto slightly bigger and slightly better things.
Created: June 21st, 2022
Published: September 9th, 2022
Last Edited: September 8th, 2022
Last edited by puffin on Fri Sep 09, 2022 4:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
12 Bar Bruise 12 Bar Bruise original album cover by Jason Galea. Still one of my favourites.
On the 7th of September, 2012, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their debut studio album, titled 12 Bar Bruise. The album’s name is a play on the 12-bar blues chord progression, one of the most prominent in popular music. 12 Bar Bruise’s cover was the band’s first ever collaboration with Melbourne artist Jason Galea. Since then, Jason has done the covers for every single King Gizzard album, as well as many of their music videos and other visuals. When the album was reissued in 2018 it came with a reimagined version of the original art.
My copy of 12 Bar Bruise, with the reimagined artwork by Jason Galea. Personally, I slightly prefer the original version.
12 Bar Bruise is a significantly more substantial record than Willoughby’s Beach, with a total of twelve tracks bringing it to just over thirty-four minutes in length. The album sees the band expand on and fill out the garage rock sound they’ve had up to this point, adding much more lyrical substance as well as more ambitious instrumentation. Stu had this to say about the album on the band’s website and in the vinyl’s liner notes:
“Firstly, thank you so much for buying this record or slipping it on your turntable or listening to my ramblings. It would have been hilarious and unfathomable to my 21 year old self that anyone beyond our immediate group of friends and a few garage rock nerds would care in the slightest! In fact I don't really remember much of making this record. I think we just wanted to make it weird. And loud. And kinda dumb. Between 19 and 23 years old, nervous and confused, wide eyed, living off goon bags, ciggies, doritos and the dole. Paul Maybury engineered and really guided us through this one. He let me take control of the faders and experiment with his seemingly endless array of recording equipment. I pretended I knew what I was doing. Anyway, he pulled it all together - I shudder to think what it would have sounded like without his road hardened wisdom. Many firsts here - first collaborations and early narrative based music with Brod Smith which would lead to making Eyes like the Sky with him a few months later. More firsts - like working with Jason Galea. Ambrose knew Jase from skateboarding circles and we found his drawing of a royal looking lizard beast-thing stabbing some teddy bear-ish monster. Seemed perfect. He's become part of the furniture and we've worked with him on everything since. Formative years? I think it was that time of your life where you start using your brain for the first time in general. Lizard brain. Who am I? Who was me? Enjoy! Love Stu”
Tracklist 1. Elbow
2. Muckraker
3. Nein
4. 12 Bar Bruise
5. Garage Liddiard
6. Sam Cherry’s Last Shot
7. High Hopes Low
8. Cut Throat Boogie
9. Bloody Ripper
10. Uh Oh I Called Mum
11. Sea Of Trees
12. Footy Footy
Recorded by Paul Maybury and King Gizzard*
Mixed by Paul Maybury and King Gizzard*
Mastered by Joseph Carra
*With the exception of the title track, more on that later
12 Bar Bruise opens with the song Elbow, the album’s second single. Ushered in by a few seconds of studio noise, the song quickly explodes into a cacophony of noise accompanied by what can only be described as a howl from Stu. It’s immediately clear that the band has upgraded their sound from Willoughby’s Beach. The noise is then accompanied by the song’s refrain “Oh, hey, hey, hey…” which is very reminiscent of the simple refrains and choruses from the band’s previous releases. The group vocals are replaced with more of a prominence on Stu as the lead vocalist, with the other band members providing more traditional background vocals.
The single cover for Elbow
The refrain is followed up by one of the band’s most aggressive and energetic verses to date: “You want? You got? / You are such a big shot / You cunt, you know me better / Than to bend my elbow back”. The whole song, from the screeching guitars and theremin, to the group-chanting that the refrain devolves into in the back half of the track, is oozing with energy. The phrase “to bend my elbow back” reminds me of the saying “twisting my arm”, or trying to force someone to do something they don’t want to do.. I really love how in the last twenty-seconds or so of the track, the guitar playing devolves into this ungraceful, almost amateur-ish riff that I think helps reinforce the raw emotions of a nasty breakup.
A live performance of Elbow from 2013 which features both Lucas and Cookie on bass, as well as a noisy breakdown of the second half of the track that isn’t present on the album.
Elbow is followed up by the less aggressive, but equally energetic and extremely catchy Muckraker. Like the first track, Muckraker features extremely simple choruses that mostly consist of “Oh no, oh no, oh no…” and “Ah, ah, ah, ah… muckraker, oh muckraker”. The term “muckraker” itself is an interesting one in regards to the song’s themes. The word literally means “the action of searching out and publicizing scandalous information about famous people in an underhanded way”, but I find it highly unlikely that this was even considered when writing the song. Instead, I assume it's being used as a synonym for ‘kicking shit’, as the song seems to be simply about having a good time. My favourite line from the track is “pissin’ shit off porcelain”, which I’ll let you interpret as you will.
The Muckraker music video, filmed and edited by Jason Galea and Greg Holden. I consider this to be the band’s first ‘real’ music video. Also, still one of my favourite King Gizzard music videos to date.
The music video for Muckraker actually exemplifies what I love about the album completely. It’s got that very old school, amateur, home-video, vacation with friends montage look about it all and that’s exactly what the song makes me feel. It makes me want to stuff six friends into a van and travel across this beautiful country I call home that I’ve seen barely any of, doing whatever dumb shit crosses our minds along the way. This feeling is especially prominent for me during the refrains, when the tempo picks up. I love how the final refrain of the song builds on this, throwing the theremin into the mix to further invoke that chaotic, fun, free-spirited emotion that the song is built around.
12 Bar Bruise’s next song is the somewhat more mellow Nein. Compared to both of the previous tracks, Nein is less chaotic and more structured. The song is a relatively lighthearted take on alcoholism or general substance abuse. In the opening verse, the narrator describes having drunk too much, describing the alcohol as “poison shit”. He pledges to never do this to himself again. This declaration is accompanied by the introduction of a hopeful sounding keyboard into the mix of guitars, giving the first part of the song a positive spin. This keyboard riff actually really stands out here, as the instrument wasn’t really present in the band’s music up to this point. I believe it is Eric playing it here, which is pretty cool.
The music video for Nein, again shot by Jason Galea and Greg Holden, this time in Stu’s shed.
The positivity ends abruptly as the chorus begins, sans keyboard: “One, two, three, four / Five, six, seven, eight / Nein, nein, nein, nein, nein, nein!”. The narrator describes drinking too much once again, counting how many he had until he could stomach no more. The instrumentation and slight absurdity in the lyrics of the refrain help the song stay somewhat lighthearted. This vicious cycle repeats once more until the song becomes more mellow and stripped back, perhaps showing the narrator at their lowest point. The verse repeats again, this time much slower and with a much weaker iteration of that once hopeful keyboard riff. The song trails off, leaving us on a melancholy and uncertain note.
The album’s fourth song is its title track, 12 Bar Bruise. This song is quite famous in the King Gizzard fanbase for being recorded on iPhones, with four of them being scattered around the room while Stu sang directly into one of them. A common misconception that I’ve seen firsthand several times is that the entire album was recorded in this way, but that isn’t true. As much as I applaud and encourage unconventional recording styles, I think at the end of the day it does nothing but hurt the song, making it perhaps the only King Gizzard song that I genuinely dislike.
Continuing on from Nein, the title track is about being too drunk. This time, specifically drunk to the point that the narrator has whiskey dick. “But look at my dick / I bet you it’s limp” is probably the worst thing that Stu, or any of the boys, has ever written. The second verse is a little stronger, alluding to “the bruise” which the song and album may be named after:
“I’ve gotta be strong / Make me live long / I’d better not wait / For a bottle’s sake / All of my friends are / Looking up dresses / They have not seen / The bruise that I’ve seen”
The narrator is reflecting on the past song and a half worth of drinking and has decided to better himself, once and for all. His friends are still set on partying and chasing girls, but they have not seen the “bruise” that he has. The bruise is again mentioned in the song’s refrain, “12 bar booze is 12 bar bruise”. I think that this is most likely referring to a ‘bruised ego’ as a result of not being able to get it up. So, the song has some amount of substantial lyrical content, but unfortunately the unconventional recording method kind of ruins it for me. Even more than usual the words are hard to make out, and Stu almost sounds like a child. The noises he makes at the very end of the song actually remind me of a baby.
The instrumental doesn’t really help either, being one of their worst ever. The song chugs along with next to no energy, and the main bassline at the root of the song just sounds awkward. It somewhat compliments the lyrics I suppose, but that just isn’t good enough for me. It also doesn’t help that it is the album’s longest song at three minutes and forty-seven seconds. At least after writing this I’ll never have to listen to the song again.
12 Bar Bruise’s fifth song is Garage Liddiard, a spectacular return to form after the lackluster title track. The song’s name is a play on Gareth Liddiard, who at the time was the lead vocalist for The Drones, another Australian band. Gareth would go on to form the band Tropical Fuck Storm in 2017. They released their second album, Braindrops, under Eric’s label, Flightless. Earlier this year they released an EP called Satanic Slumber Party that was built off of a jam session with King Gizzard, which I will talk about in a later chapter.
It’s unclear to me whether or not the song is actually about Gareth, as there is nothing in the lyrics that directly reference him. The narrator sings that “[his] head’s all bleak”, which is affecting his love life. As well, “[his] knees are weak / And it makes for walking tough”. That’s what you get for drinking too much I guess. The refrain, which I find to be on the less-catchy end of the spectrum in regards to these simple hooks of their early discography, is the narrator crying out in pain: “Oww! Oww!... Ouch!” The instrumental for this song is where it shines, bringing the energy levels of the album back to roughly where they were on Muckraker. Ambrose really steals the show here with his harmonica solo in the back half of the track. You can even hear Stu say “Uh, Ambrose?” in the middle of it, that’s how hard it goes.
Apparently the song was originally slower than the version that’s on the album, but producer Paul Maybury suggested playing the song as “fast and ferociously” as possible. Thank the gods for that decision, because the album’s pacing really benefits from this speed, given that the last two tracks have been pretty mellow and the next track, Sam Cherry’s Last Shot, is a much slower song. Fun fact, I misread the title of this song for so long, thinking it was “Garbage Liddiard”. When I first learned it was named after Gareth Liddiard, I thought it was a diss.
Picture this: you’re a young, Australian, garage-rock enthusiast in the early 2010s, and you’ve just bought a local band’s new album. You loved their EP from the previous year, and the first five songs of this release have been pretty good. Track six begins; at first you hear no guitars, no drums, just some noises in the background as an older voice speaks, not sings, something about a man being found dead. Suddenly, the music begins. Though it isn’t the raw, energetic, psych-infused, surfy, punky garage rock you’ve been hearing from the band up to this point. Instead, it sounds just like the soundtrack to some old spaghetti western you saw on TV years ago. Welcome to Sam Cherry’s Last Shot, the first indication that King Gizzard isn’t gonna be just any old rock band.
A performance of Sam Cherry’s Last Shot, with Broderick Smith narrating, from 2012. This performance is mentioned in the liner notes for the band’s next album, Eyes Like The Sky.
The song tells the story, narrated by Ambrose’s father Broderick Smith, of Sam Cherry, a man who was attacked by Native Americans and killed himself with his last shot. The story is lifted from a book called Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years’ Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West, originally published in 1882. The final few lines of the story we’re added by Broderick, and did not appear in the original book:
“Such is the way out in the west. People die by extreme barbaric ways. We’ve taken their lands, and in return they take our viscera and spread it across the desert lands.” I’m glad this was added, because as you can tell by the title the original book is not exactly on the side of the Natives, calling them “savages”. This addition at least gives some justification to their actions, and paints the battle more fairly. I still have some thoughts about this song, it doesn’t really sit right with me. I obviously don’t think Broderick or the band meant any ill-will by releasing this song, but the choice of source material is a little odd. I think their second try at this concept, their next album Eyes Like The Sky, does a much better job, both story-wise and instrumentally. That album is very replayable to me, while Sam Cherry’s Last Shot is best on first listen in my opinion.
An edit of what I would guess are a bunch of old western shows or movies to go along with Sam Cherry’s Last Shot, uploaded on Jason Galea’s old YouTube channel.
The instrumentation is honestly really cool, even if I view it as a bit of a prototype. As I said, it’s very reminiscent of soundtracks to old western movies, but with a bit of a psychedelic spin on it as well. I especially love the droning guitar riff around the middle of the song that sounds super nostalgic to me. The song was apparently just meant as an instrumental, and I think it would be cool if we got that version some day. That’s not to say that Broderick Smith’s narration is bad or anything, because it’s really not. His voice is absolutely perfect for storytelling, I hope he pops up on a Gizz album again some time in the future.
I think, as I just said, the best way to describe this song is as a ‘prototype’. I love it because it is so out of left field at this point in the band’s career, and really shows that from the start they have just been doing what they want to do, which is really why I love this band in the first place. On the other hand, it is so outshone by Eyes Like The Sky that I rarely go back to it. As well, there are those weird feelings I get about the subject matter that I mentioned earlier. All in all, alright song but I love what it represents for the band.
The next song on 12 Bar Bruise is High Hopes Low. Like the title track, this song was also recorded unconventionally, but in my opinion is a lot better and more interesting. High Hopes Low was recorded in two separate sessions, the second being about a month after the first. The two recordings had very different mixes, with one having the instruments panned wide with very washed out vocals. The other one has a tighter sound with clearer vocals and the instruments focused in the centre. The two recordings were spliced up into sections and the song switches between the two a few times, which gives the song another interesting layer beyond just its lyrical content.
Lyrically, the song is essentially the narrator telling a friend to lower their expectations of the narrator because “[they] ain’t that smart”. I have two issues with this track. First, the song’s intro is this lo-fi keyboard part that almost sounds like laser blasts from an old sci-fi movie. I find this part really harsh on the ears and I’d rather it not be there. Secondly, this is the second longest song on 12 Bar Bruise at three minutes and forty-six seconds, and I don’t think it justifies its length. However, the song is really damn catchy and instrumentally sounds pretty great. I love the way that the harmonica sounds in the more washed-out parts, and Stu delivers perhaps the album’s best WOO during the first refrain. The song also just has a lot of energy behind it, more-so than the last few songs. I also like how the two different recording methods sort of compliment the track’s title containing both the words “high” and “low”.
The album’s eighth track is Cut Throat Boogie, which is, as far as I can tell, the first King Gizzard song to be primarily written by a band member other than Stu, being Ambrose. Amby told the story of this song in a YouTube live chat:
“cut throat boogie is about me getting my throat cut.. I was at a party when i was 16 and a friend broke a bottle and was being silly and grabbed me from behind and i leant into the bottle”
“the bottle cut my neck and blood was pissing out everywhere.. the doctor said i was an inche from my jugular lol”
I love this song, it’s easily my favourite from 12 Bar Bruise. Lyrically it is the most complicated and substantial song in their discography so far, if you aren’t counting Sam Cherry’s Last Shot, and it has so much emotion and angst behind it. This makes sense of course, Ambrose is the youngest member of King Gizzard and was only nineteen at the time. It was only three years after a near-death experience for him, and perhaps one of his first chances to really pour out his emotions about it. The first verse begins by describing a sense of childhood innocence:
“As a child I felt inclined / To fold my ears in twine / Never once was I confined / I picked and choosed about my ride / So buckle me in before we set sail ahead / For it smells like cabbage / Got way too stale like death”
The first two lines describe Amby’s ability to fold his ear inside of itself, which he has been able to do since he was a kid. The next two show how before the titular throat-cutting, he was a very carefree person who didn’t have a lot of worries in life. A typical Australian sixteen year old I would guess. “So buckle me in before we set sail ahead” implies that he wishes that he had been prepared for something as serious and potentially traumatic as a near-death experience, which is foreshadowed in the next two lines.
A photo of a very young Ambrose, from his now-defunct myspace page.
I’ve been saying this a lot, but I love how much energy is behind Cut Throat Boogie. It’s haunting while remaining upbeat, and has a forceful, driving beat that never slows down. It has my favourite drumming on the album from Cavs, and I love how Ambrose chimes in on his harmonica in between verses. The song continues into a short bridge that describes someone seeing Ambrose just after the incident: “Oh you’re white as ghost, I never felt so pale / As the blood dripped across the floor”, after which the song picks up even more. Since the song has no chorus, from here it goes straight into the second verse:
“So put it buried in your chest / With the rest of your drunken regrets / Inches from your jugular / As the room fills up in front of ya / It took them long enough / For them to stop and suggest / Hey we better get him some help / We better get him out of here”
The first two lines of the verse, to me, describe how Ambrose has bottled up his emotions surrounding the throat-cutting, and is now finally releasing them on this song. It really sounds like that’s the case, as Amby’s voice on this track sounds like it has a lot of emotion behind it, and is an extremely powerful performance for a nineteen year old. I’m a huge fan of Ambrose’s voice because I think it just sounds so damn unique, and makes songs like this one stand out. The second half of the verse reveals how, in the chaos of the party, it took a while for anyone to even notice that he was bleeding. This is why, in the song’s bridge, he is already as white as a ghost when someone finally notices.
A performance of Cut Throat Boogie from 2015. Such a small stage for seven people and two drum kits.
The song then goes directly into its third, longest, and final verse:
“How did I manage to cope as the blood soaked / Through my clothes and to the floor / From outside to the bathroom door / I was inches from my life / Yeah that’s what keeps me up at night / Oh how did I survive, you should’a died / How did I manage to cope being alive / After all it was just a innocent play fight / I hope they don’t stop to sympathize / Oh, stitch up the past to cure their whoremented heart, ah / Oh, tormented dreams it’s all left in between”
Here, Ambrose describes the long-term mental effects that his near-death experience has had on him. It stops him from sleeping, and he almost feels guilty, like it would have been better if he had died. He doesn’t want any sympathy from anyone, which is understandable, but the note that this song ends on actually makes me think that he wasn’t fully done processing this trauma at the time. Or I could be totally wrong, it’s obviously impossible to know and not exactly my business either. The song is fantastic, it is a standout from this album and their early discography in general. It’s the best lyrically, vocally, and maybe even sonically as well. I love how it doesn’t have a chorus, I love how Ambrose seemingly made up the word “whoremented” in the final verse, and I just love how raw and emotional it is.
Cut Throat Boogie is followed by Bloody Ripper, which I think is one of the most accessible songs the band has ever made. The song reminds me of some bands and singers that are on the more indie side of things, especially the guitar tones and Stu’s vocal delivery. Alongside Elbow, Bloody Ripper was one of the singles for the album, releasing on April 3rd, 2012. The single was released in digital format and was paired with Sam Cherry’s Last Shot.
The single art for Bloody Ripper. I can’t find who the artist is, but my guess is that it is not Jason Galea, based on the style.
This song is one of the catchiest on the album, at least since Muckraker, and part of that is how clear and clean the song and especially the vocals are in comparison to the rest of the album. This is probably why it reminds me of some other bands, it’s not quite as ‘Gizzy’ as the rest of 12 Bar Bruise. Stu still howls like a threatened animal before each chorus, but the song in general is a lot more tame than their usual sound, while still remaining high energy.
Bloody Ripper describes the two sided coin of a toxic relationship. The verse has the narrator telling their significant other “Push me down, I will not crack / You’re just a monkey with your claws in my back”. They have had enough of their partner’s abuse and realize they are being dragged down by the relationship. The verse ends with the narrator revealing the way he copes with the abuse, being the “murky bottle”. The chorus shows the other side of the coin: “But it’s like all I wanna do / Sink my teeth in you”. The narrator still loves their partner, despite the abuse, but there is also a sense of manipulation in “You already told me to / You said, ‘It’s alright’” . As the song comes to an end it speeds up as well as rises in pitch, which leaves the song feeling somewhat unresolved or uncertain, reflecting the state of the relationship it describes.
Bloody Ripper performed live in Sydney in May 2012. This version of the song feels a bit more aggressive and raw, and honestly I prefer it. I also love seeing Lucas dancing shirtless on stage, since it seems so out of character for him nowadays.
Following Bloody Ripper is the far more noisy and raw Uh Oh, I called Mum, a song about Lucas’ experience at Meredith Music Festival 2011. Apparently he had “a little bit too much fun at Meredith last year, ended up in the medical tent wrapped in foil and called his mum.” The intro, the song’s bridge, as well as its outro all consist of different band members chanting “Mum mum mum mum mum…” over and over again. I especially love the way Ambrose does the chant during the bridge. Speaking of Amby, as is customary with a lot of this album, his harmonica playing is one of the stars here. The drumming is also particularly great here, really making it one of the more blood-pumping tracks on the album.
A performance of Oh Uh, I called Mum (as well as many other songs) from 2012. I also really love Eric’s theremin playing during the performance of Dead-Beat here.
12 Bar Bruise’s penultimate song is Sea of Trees. The song is about suicide, specifically the ‘Aokigahara suicide forest’ in Japan. The song’s lyrics are the same verse repeated twice:
“Oh hell, I’m feeling underwater / My head is sinking like a stone / And hell, I’m feeling kinda sick / I don’t know what’s the use in it / And when you’re feeling suicidal / Sometimes you’ve just got to unfold”
The second time through, the third line is changed to “And hell, I’m feeling like a prick”. Along with Cut Throat Boogie, this is the most serious that the lyrics get on this album, and are some of the darkest in the entire discography. I think the third line change adds a lot to the song thematically. At first, depression can feel like something is wrong with you, but as it gets worse someone may feel like they are the problem, which is reflected in “I’m feeling kinda sick” changing to “I’m feeling like a prick”. Sonically, instrumentally, this is my favourite song from the album. The guitars, the drumming, the harmonica, and the theremin all shine here. The WOO at the start of the song is one the best from this era of the band’s discography as well.
An extended, jammy version of Sea of Trees from 2022. I love when the band lets songs evolve like this.
Interestingly enough, “Sea of Trees” was almost King Gizzard’s name. Around the time that the band was forming, Eric went to see Gareth Liddiard’s band The Drones and heard ‘Gaz’ talk about the Sea of Trees in Japan. For a couple of early shows the band was actually called “Sea of Trees”. The song ends abruptly with the sound of the tape machine running out of tape, which also fits the song thematically, as someone’s life can end abruptly and prematurely to suicide.
In a drastic thematic one-eighty, the album’s final song is Footy Footy. It’s about Australian Rules Football, specifically that of the 90s which the band members would’ve grown up with. The song ended up featuring in the game AFL Live 2, being one of a couple King Gizzard songs to be featured in a video game. Singing it makes me feel a bit like a moron, but the chorus is actually pretty catchy:
“Footy footy, all I wanna do is / Footy footy, all I wanna kick is / Footy footy, they catch the ball, kick, play on! / Footy footy, footy footy footy!”
The first two verses consist of Joey adlibbing two lists of Australian Football players, while the third is him doing his best impression of a “footy-boy”. The song is one of the ‘surfiest’ on the album, and has a similar summer vacation feel to it that Muckraker has. Despite one of the band members saying “this song is the shittest song on the album, so we put it at the end”, I think it actually works really well as the album’s finale. The adlibbing reminds me of a song like Last Call by Kanye West, which is probably one of my favourite album outros of all time. Footy Footy isn’t exactly on that level or anything, but I think it suits this album pretty well. I’ll even award the song the title of the most Australian King Gizzard song, or indeed even the most “Gizzard”.
So that’s 12 Bar Bruise, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s debut album. I think I sounded more harsh talking about this album than I did talking about Anglesea or Willoughby’s Beach, but I believe that’s because there is just more to dig into. 12 Bar Bruise is significantly more ambitious and substantial than either of those EPs, or any of the early singles. From the electric, energetic, raw songs like Elbow and Muckraker that build off of the band’s existing sound, and more considered and emotional songs like Cut Throat Boogie and Sea of Trees, to pleasant surprises like Sam Cherry’s Last Shot, this album has a lot of different things going on. Of course not all of it hits, but most of it does; 12 Bar Bruise is one of the band’s most fun-filled albums from back to front. And that’s saying a lot.
Flightless The Flightless logo
In the first couple years of its existence, King Gizzard tried and failed to get signed to a record label. So in 2012, Eric Moore founded Flightless, his own record company. The label’s first release was 12 Bar Bruise, and then Tee Pee, the second EP by The Murlocs. At this point, the company was a very small-scale operation. Vinyl-runs were extremely limited, and records were apparently shipped in pizza boxes. Nonetheless, this allowed Gizz to grow as a band by getting their name and music out there, while still staying independent. Because the band essentially owned its own label, the boys never needed to squash their creativity to appeal to a major record label, and could do whatever they wanted.
Overtime, the label grew and began to sign more and more artists, mostly from Melbourne. Today the company has over a dozen bands and artists signed to it, including Babe Rainbow, Leah Senior, ORB, Traffik Island, and Tropical Fuck Storm. In 2015, Flightless hosted the very first Gizzfest, a music festival featuring King Gizzard, other Flightless artists, as well as others in the Australian psychedelic and garage rock scene. In the next few years the festival grew larger, touring around the country and inviting international artists, like one of my personal favourites Kikagaku Moyo, as well as Mild High Club who Gizz would later collaborate with for the album Sketches of Brunswick East in 2017. Speaking of Brunswick East, that's the neighborhood in Melbourne where Flightless would open its first record store, Flightless 168. The same year, in 2018, Flightless re-released a handful of older King Gizzard records: Willoughby’s Beach, 12 Bar Bruise, Eyes Like The Sky,Float Along - Fill Your Lungs, and Oddments. Two years later, in August of 2020, Eric left King Gizzard to focus solely on running the label.
Flightless 168
There is a lot of fan speculation about this ‘break-up’. Plenty of people think Stu and Eric hate each other, and I’ve even seen one person, very confidently for someone with no source, say that Eric was kicked out of the band for being a conservative. These rumours are fueled by the fact that the next few Gizz albums were released independently, rather than through Flightless. Personally, I think this is mostly just dumb fan speculation. I believe that King Gizzard simply grew too large for Flightless, which is still a small company. The Murlocs, Pipe-Eye, and Bullant (Amby, Cookie, and Joey) all still release their music through Flightless, and Gizz even released 2022’s Made In Timeland through Flightless in Australia. I think there could be some merit to the claim that at least Eric and Stu aren’t on the best of terms anymore, but I’m not really interested in doing any research into this as it really just isn’t my business.
Something I really appreciate about Flightless, as well as the band’s recent independent releases, is their focus on being environmentally friendly. Vinyls are often made from recycled wax, and come in paper bags rather than plastic wrap. Recently, Flightless has moved to a new warehouse after closing Flightless 168, but a new retail store is apparently coming soon. I’ve always wanted to visit Australia, especially Melbourne, and I definitely hope it's open by the time I do!
Created: September 5th, 2022
Published: September 9th, 2022
Last Edited: September 9th, 2022
