After the emergence of psychedelic rock from the counterculture music scene of the early 1960s, the genre has gone under-appreciated by mass audiences, appealing only to a niche group of listeners. Only bands among the likes of Pink Floyd have served as major exceptions, reaching millions of fans worldwide, yet failing in having their success trickle down to the rest of the genre. With the recent popularity of alternative and indie rock, psychedelic has begun to make a slow comeback, with bands such as Tame Impala attracting flocks of young fans. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has tried to capitalize on this increase in popularity by producing novel and experimental psychedelic albums since their 2010 formation. Despite addictive beats and chill basslines, their newest album, Flying Microtonal Banana leaves listeners wanting more, and fails to provide a sufficiently meaningful work to propel psychedelic rock back into the forefront of popular culture.
Photo source: Flightless Records
According to frontman Stu Mackenzie, Flying Microtonal Banana was inspired by his experimentation with microtonal tuning, which allows the band to play music in intervals smaller than traditional western music. This unique style is evident throughout the album, with songs such as “Melting” and “Doom City” using speed and warped lyrics to create a hypnotic ambience that pervades most of the album. The album also makes use of a traditional Turkish instrument called the zurna, which sounds like high-pitched bagpipes. The band is not new to experimenting with their music; indeed, their passion for constant innovation and hard work has been a staple of their career. Attesting to this, Flying Microtonal Banana is just one of five King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard albums slated for release this year. However, the group’s strategy of quantity-over-quality is not without its disadvantages. There is little variation among each of the 9 songs on the album, and song length seems to be completely arbitrary, with some songs stretching past 7 minutes and some hardly pushing 2. Considering that some of the album’s songs such as “Billabong Valley,” literally fade out in the middle of their chorus, this arbitrariness can prove to be frustrating to the listener. While the band’s innovativeness can be appreciated by fans of the genre, the end result sounds overly ambitious at times.
The album has an openly apocalyptic message, with Mackenzie lending his electronically-warped voice to detail scenes of destruction and death, most likely an allusion to global warming and its consequences on society. In the song “Open Water,” Mackenzie darkly sings, “Open water / Where’s the shore gone? / How’d I falter? / Open water / Height of the sea / Will bury me / And all I see is / Open water,” a deathly foreboding of the destruction that may be wrought by rising seas. Despite this critique of modern society’s inaction on climate issues, the album overall feels void of meaning, with lyrics taking a backseat to loud, varied instrumentation and monotonal tuning. In most songs, Mackenzie’s voice is drowned out by synth, guitar riffs, and the zurna. Repetition dominates the album lyrically, with songs like “Rattlesnake” relying on repeating one or two words over and over again for several minutes at a time. While this unquestionably contributes to the trippy vibe of the album, in the end it leaves more to be wanted from the group and causes an overall dissatisfying experience.
The album is ultimately stymied by its own ambition, with experimentation and artistry taking precedence over creating a meaningful work for the listener. Individual songs fail to particularly stand out, and bleed into the collective whole of the album. While this homogeneity is usually an aspiration for psychedelic albums, in Flying Microtonal Banana it highlights a struggle to strike a balance between innovation and entertainment. That being said, avid fans of psychedelic rock are likely to appreciate the route King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard took on the album, despite its flaws. While Flying Microtonal Banana may not repackage psychedelic rock to wider, younger audiences, it takes the genre to interesting, albeit sometimes ineffective, places.
