Ten years and over twenty albums in and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard truly seem unable to slow down, following each new idea down its own rabbit hole and trusting in their abilities as a collective to pull something engaging out. But on Changes, their fifth and final record of 2022, the band proves that they also know when to let one of those ideas marinate. Bandleader Stu Mackenzie first developed the album’s concept – an oscillation between two chords and musical keys – and started composing it back in 2017, originally intending it to be their fifth album of that year. But it didn’t come together then and was pieced together over the subsequent years until finally being completed just this past summer. Pulling in elements of ‘70s R&B and funk while refining the lo-fi jazziness of past albums like Sketches of Brunswick East and Quarters with sharper production and poppier songwriting, the resultingmetamorphic “song-cycle” is one of King Gizzard’s most distinct and focused projects of the last few years.
Bandleader Stu Mackenzie first developed the album’s concept – an oscillation between two chords and musical keys – and started composing it back in 2017, originally intending it to be their fifth album of that year. But it didn’t come together then and was pieced together over the subsequent years until finally being completed just this past summer. Pulling in elements of ‘70s R&B and funk while refining the lo-fi jazziness of past albums like Sketches of Brunswick East and Quarters with sharper production and poppier songwriting, the resulting metamorphic “song cycle” is one of King Gizzard’s most distinct and focused projects of the last few years.
On the opening “Change”, a 13-minute odyssey that earns its place in the pantheon of King Gizzard epics, Mackenzie ponders humanity’s capacity to break free from the destructive yoke of capitalism, and what might be achievable if we succeed. “Who could we be given an equal opportunity?/What could we see given equal chance to actually see change?” he questions over a relaxed electric keyboard groove. The song moves from there on a shifting course from a chirpy funk break (with an absolute earworm of a hook) to a rapped verse from Ambrose Kenny-Smith and then into the sprightly synthesizer melody that serves as one of the album’s most prominent motifs, before eventually building up to a rollicking glam-rock finish in its final minutes where that melody gets mirrored on searing electric guitar.
Ever the masters of a smooth transition, the band flows seamlessly from “Change” through the other six tracks on the album, settling back into that same keyboard groove for the light-hearted “Hate Dancin’”, where Mackenzie claims over a remarkably danceable beat that he “still hates dancing”. That is until the attention of a woman on the dancefloor has him revealing that he “was just kidding” and might like dancing after all as the music morphs into a bit of a psychedelic swirl. The subsequent “Astroturf” is far and away the record’s highpoint, and perhaps the funkiest song King Gizzard has laid to tape thus far. Amid grimy saxophone stabs, whirls of flute and mellotron, and plucky bass Mackenzie and Kenny-Smith sarcastically espouse the virtues of the titular artificial grass in tight vocal harmony. “Makes me feel better knowing I won’t go out on my lawn and see an animal” they sing with just the right hint of menace. The song’s chorus pits this man-made change against one of nature’s great symbols of change as it switches perspective to a group of butterflies fluttering by, “just hatched from chrysalis” but “looking terrified” at the plastic now covering their home.
The back half of Changes finds the band expanding the musical theme out in a smattering of directions, most excitingly on “Gondii”, a doomy new wave number led by a driving synth-and-drum pulse with yet another catchy hook and a prominent return of that throughline melody. “Exploding Suns”, the only track here to have survived from the album’s initial 2017 sessions, floats in a jazzy and psychedelic haze, with alien synthesizers and disquieting vocals sending things drifting into the darkness of outer space as lines like “The past and future intertwine/The sun explodes at any time” contemplate the fickleness of our existence. Bringing the record full circle, King Gizzard regurgitates some of the opening track’s musical themes on the appropriately-titled “Short Change”. The vocals fade to the back against burning guitars, ominous synth arpeggios, and one final repeat of that sticky little melody, all of the album’s various energies colliding together here in the band’s classic madcap style.
Listening to Changes can feel at times like playing through an old-school Nintendo game; each song is at a different level where the central set of motifs is broken down and reshaped around each new aesthetic and new mission. While its slightly softer palette – skewing away from the full-tilt sonic mayhem the band is typically known for – may not be every fan’s cup of tea, with this album King Gizzard has produced some of their most outwardly accessible music to date and has done so without sacrificing their identity in the slightest. Who knows what Changes might have sounded like if the band had rushed it out in 2017, but as it arrives now to wrap up its mammoth 2022 its seamless collection of earworm melodies and heady grooves make for a pretty compelling argument that it was well worth the wait.
