Previous year was the year of King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, and whoever tries to convince you otherwise, feel free to ignore them. When they said how they plan to release five albums in one year, many were skeptical because how the hell is one small band from Australia going to pull off hyperproduction and not kill themselves. We were used to getting albums from Gizzards more frequent than from any other musicians, yet five albums in one year sounded pretty hardcore. And what did we get at the end? Five damn solid albums. A special kind of joke was when they posted on Facebook on Christmas Day: Not many days left in a year ayy. Five days later, we got Gumboot Soup.
Gumboot Soul is again something completely different from anything else they have dropped in the past. Somehow, it is closest to their 2015 effort Paper Mache Balloon Dreams, yet the differences are conspicuous. Gumboot Soup is a psychedelic rock indie story that we kind of heard from The Flaming Lips (from the beginning of their career because the new stuff is difficult to listen) and MGMT (from the beginning of their career because the new stuff is difficult to listen). Ofcourse, Gizzards have implemented everything that they have learned, including microtonal music, jazz improvisations and epic atmosphere. Generally, this album serves as a synthesis of their work, with psychedelic winning over hard rock.
The album commences magnificently, with Beginner's Luck, a track that shows The Flaming Lips and MGMT can stop their career If Gizzards decide to continue creating within this genre. Greenhouse Heath Death has elements of fighting with Balrog, while Barefoot Desert is a sugar-coated psychedelic indie pop saturated with dynamic twists and improvisations (this is the influence of their collaborations with Mild High Club. Next few numbers are in a compatible tone, each with different psychedelic rock ornaments. Here we can clearly observe that King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are capable of preserving their signature sound and vocal interpretation no matter the genre they experiment with. On the other hand, The Great Chain Of Being shows super high resembles with Led Zeppelin.
This record is maybe their most diverse yet. Maybe it is the album of the leftovers, but it still comes off as coherent whole and proves that these guys are prolific maniacs. Gizzards have set the bar so high, it is hard to imagine what would be above that bar.
