In 2017,
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard began work on an album with a typically challenging concept; this time on a smaller scale than building their own instruments to play microtonal music or playing all the songs so they blended into one another. Instead, the group came up with a chord progression they liked and wrote songs with different moods and instrumentation, with an eye toward fitting them together into a kind of song cycle. The plan fizzled out when the results didn't quite measure up to the band's high standards. They never gave up on the idea, though, and went back to it many times over the years, adding to the musical vocabulary as they themselves grew and took on more and more styles Katamari Damaci style. Finally, in 2022, they had it all done and released it under the fitting name of
Changes. First things first: The fact that there's only one chord progression utilized doesn't make for repetitious listening. As anyone who has followed the band's prolific career might guess, they aren't shy about emptying the contents of the kitchen sink onto tape. Opening track "Change" gives a clue to the wide-open approach of the album as it balances cool jazz moods with hip-hop rhymes, Motorik grooves with hypnotic chants, and majestic synths with a thrilling classic rock coda. It's a heck of a way to start an album, and the rest does its best to keep up as it swerves from laid-back funk jazz with humming synths, feathery flutes, and thumb-popping bass runs ("Astroturf") to insistent synth pop ("Gondi") to nocturnal soul balladry ("Exploding Suns") to the super bouncy '80s pop of "Hate Dancin'," a rare song in their oeuvre that actually does inspire dancing. It all sounds very
Gizzard-y, which is to say that it's inventive, exciting, and almost giddy pop music that walks the line between art and commerce like they were born doing it. Check the album-ending "Short Change" for a fine example of a song that sports a typically giant hook, the kind that fans should eat up with a giant spoon, then coats it with oddball synths, scathing jazz-rock guitar solos, and an overloaded mix. It's weird and familiar at once, like exploring the moon from the safety of your own couch.
King Gizzard are never less than compelling, and even when their concepts are modest, they deliver a final product that's psychedelic pop/rock/funk/soul/prog/what have you at its very best. ~ Tim Sendra