SOUNDTRACK: KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD-Gumboot Soup (2017).
At the beginning of 2017, KGATLW promised that the would release five albums in the year. They released four and as the year drew to an end it looked like we might not get that promised fifth release. And then on the last day of the year, Dec 31, they released Gumboot Soup.
Surely this one–squeezed in on the last day of the year–must be a mishmash of the crap that they didn’t put on their other records, right? Or maybe acoustic versions of existing songs? Or something equally lame?
Indeed, not. For KGATLW are nothing if not full of ideas.
Their previous albums were thematic. This one is certainly more of a collection of songs rather than an album. And yet, this collection is not crap. Mackenzie described thee album as a “place for us to put a lot of different ideas that we’re trying to experiment with in the song, rather than within the whole record. And for me, some of my favorite songs of the year are on [Gumboot]. It’s more song-oriented than album-oriented.”
So the album isn’t unified, but that diversity somehow makes it even more compelling.
“Beginner’s Luck” is a beautiful sweet delicate song. The opening is quiet guitar and the clearest vocals yet from Stu. It’s a dreamy, gentle song, as if they were influenced by the Mild High Club sessions to write a pretty, retro pop song. There’s great bass on this song as well and I love that Ambrose adds some lead vocals to the chorus. There’s some lovely flute and backing vocals. As the song reaches its end it gets louder and more distorted with a wild wah wah guitar solo and the whole band joining in to rock. This seems to mock the sweetness of the beginning.
It’s followed by “Greenhouse Heat Death” which reintroduces some microtonal melodies and a rumbling groove. This song is an environmental song with Stu singing in his darker, distorted voice about the degradation of the Earth (from the Earth’s point of view–“my house has fried, all life has died”).
“Barefoot Desert” comes out of that darkness with a wonderfully bright song–flutes, some terrific bass lines, and Ambrose’s always-chipper vocals. The riff is dynamite too. There’s even a very Beatles-esque middle instrumental section before the song lopes off again.
“Muddy Water” is a really catchy fast-paced stomper with some call and response vocals (I love at the end when Ambrose starts singing “I prefer the muddy water” back to Stu). The riffing is great and it all feels very reckless, like they (or we) can’t stop. The introduction of (two) saxophones is pretty unusual and a nifty twist on their sound.
“Superposition” is a soft almost robotically smoothed out song. Everything is high and floaty–the flute, the vocals, the bass. It’s a pretty different sound for them, although they maintain the vocals-follow-the-musical-melody that they have perfected. And then of course, they have to upend the pleasantness with some crazy skronking saxophone solos in the middle of the song. But even those seem almost distant and like they are not exactly part of the song.
“Down the Sink” is a fantastic song that sounds very much unlike anything they’ve done before. There’s some cool funk and 70s inflections on the riffs and sounds. The chorus “the street is where people live, the street is where people die” has a fantastic 70s, almost blaxploitation, film soundtrack feel. I’d love to hear them explore more of this sound.
“The Great Chain of Being” is one of the outright heaviest things they’re recorded, with big heavy riffs and growling vocals. It’s a bit out of place on this record, but it rocks too wonderfully to complain about. It clearly seems like it could have been on Murder of the Universe, but maybe they just enjoyed rocking out and wanted to write a new song.
“The Last Oasis” has a delightful cocktail lounge feel, with vibes, languid bass and Ambrose’s gentle vocals. I love that it gets hazier and sounds more and more like it’s being submerged as the song goes on. Meanwhile, “All is Known” returns to them microtonal sounds of Banana for the main riff and heft of this pumping song.
One of my favorite tracks is the delicate “I’m Sleeping In.” I love the interesting and satisfying bass lines that runs through this gentle song about sleeping:
I know within my body
I need rest from muscle ache
I really need a break
So I’m sleepin’ in, in
There’s some quiet harmonica and a really compressed sound. It seems like sleep will never come because of some random noises that come in to disrupt the chill feeling. Although by the end, the tape slows down and sleep has finally won. The disc ends with “The Wheel” a groovy psychedelic track with wavery keys and flute. It’s the least dynamic song on the record but it feels nicely stretched out and trippy.
So the track order definitely makes this feel like an odds and ends assortment. I’m not sure if they could have made a heavy side and a trippy side, or if it’s just more fun to have this batch of oddments together in the soup of gumboot.
The good thing is there’s not a bad song on it and it really covers every imaginable style.
After five albums in year, the only thing to do was to release no records in 2018 and tour the world. But 2019 suggests a new disc in on the horizon. I can’t wait.
[READ: March 3, 2019] “The Arithmetic of Common Ground”
This story had an interesting conceit which I feel it didn’t fully follow through on. It posits that children have commonalities and looks at what estimated percentage of those commonalities they need to have for friendships to work. I enjoyed the way it seemed almost like a technical report in the beginning.
At the opening, we see a couple meeting.
Born within six months of one another, within the same medium-sized city, and of comparable socio-economic class, they automatically overlap somewhere between 33 to 35 percent. Make the city Calgary and make them both only children who—as a consequence of their solitudes—have both grown up somewhat unsociable and somewhat bookish. If both dutifully attended music lessons in guitar and piano to complement their school work, their common ground might go as high as 40 to 55 percent.
Despite being different by some 45 to 60 points, they share enough interests (musical) to meet, fall in love, get married and have a child: Benjamin.
But for group dynamics a simple Venn diagram does not suffice because each pairing is its own diagram. The story proceeds to explore Benjamin and his friends. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 