King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard | Fishing For Fishies | Album Review

Flightless Records
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Australian psych rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have returned with their first release since their ambitious five-record venture in 2017 with Fishing For Fishies. In true King Gizz style, the group totally reworked their sound again to develop their most mixed bag album yet.

For the most part, Fishing For Fishies features middle-of-the-road indie blues tunes with some quirkier King Gizzardy weirdness thrown in now and again. This includes dry production, harmonica lines, and four-on-the-floor grooves, all of which lend themselves well to tracks like “Plastic Boogie” and “The Cruel Millennial.”

Over time, this default blues rock style begins to sound less like a new artistic direction for the group and more like the soundtrack to a Chevrolet commercial. “Real’s Not Real” and “Boogieman Sam” exemplify this issue as they hardly offer more than a stale rock groove and repetitive lyrics. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it weren’t for the band’s adventurousness on their other works.

Some moments on the record do provide a level of innovation more in King Gizz fashion. On “Acarine” and “Cyboogie,” the band abandons their electric guitars in favor of full synthesized instrumentations, the former of which contains well-integrated electronic ambience and bizzaro chords that give the record a more mature tone than the staleness of the earlier tracks.

There’s also a few instrumental sections (like in “This Thing”) that incorporate more outlandish instrumentations and melodies, with harps or flutes. The main focus of the record certainly still rests on those less interesting indie blues segments, but it still provides a break in pace.

Overall, while it may not be their best contribution, King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard still produces a refined and well-written album with Fishing For Fishies.