King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Pump Out Yet Another Album With Diminishing Returns
3.8 out of 5 stars
The new album Butterfly 3000 from Australian psychedelic rock band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard seems to be just another album released for the sake of creating more music without having much intention or thought to how to craft a great album.
Sure the album flows within itself quite well, but the actual music and songs are pretty uninspiring and not much fun to listen to.
These guys have produced good albums in the past that were more energetic and didn’t have the mundaneness in the albums. It always seems that they have a concept or theme for many of their albums as well, but I haven’t studied them all to know everything about all the albums.
This is actually their second album this year as they released L.W. earlier this year as a companion album to K.G. in 2020 (I am sure if you look at the band name, you can guess what the initials stand for). These were both compilation albums of earlier works as recording and touring was not really possible due to Covid-19.
The entire appeal of KGLW is that they seem to be Australia's answer to the Grateful Dead or the String Cheese Incident. Jam bands do have a time and place for listening to them, but almost without fail, jam bands almost always make boring records.
The live shows with 5-minute solos or instrumental only songs don't work as well on albums.
I haven't been to a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard show before, but I have watched some of their live concerts online, and I still don't get it.
That being said, I also paid a lot of money to go watch Phish play in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand, and I was pretty bored the entire time while watching them as well, and a lot of people consider them the peak jam band.
I get that bands like this are incredibly talented and do cool things on their instruments, but that doesn't mean that any of the music comes out great.
If you are into drugs, I suppose it may change the perspective of the experience, but as I am not a drug user, KGLW and other jam bands just don't appeal to me at all and frankly they just get annoying very quickly.
There are two bright spots on Butterfly 3000 though.
The songs "Interior People" and "Catching Smoke" actually have a bit more mass appeal. I actually was about to just stop the album after the first four songs which sound like one continuous song with no enthusiasm or theme, but I almost always give every album a full listen unless it is truly terrible.
I think that when a band puts out 16 albums in 11 years, there is always going to be something that doesn't work. Most of this album doesn't work for me, but the two songs that I liked, I wouldn't mind listening to more often.
All in all, I don't think I will ever be a fan of KGLW, but that's okay, they are doing things their own way. I can totally respect that.
It's just not my cup of tea overall. Though, I will say, they have definitely had better albums and songs over the years. So, maybe it's just their descent into psychedelic rock that I am not all that happy about.