King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Flight b741 POLL

I would've flooded ILM with Flight b741 love back in the winter, except that one of my best friends is a Gizzhead too, so instead HE was the one getting flooded.

I probably did 50-60 good listens back then and another 15 since. There's basically no downtime on this thing. Everything is exciting and beautiful, and lots of it is really touching too. The lyrics of the opener get me every goddam time.

My favorite *moment* in all Gizzard is on Le Risque, but I'm not sure whether the song as a whole is my favorite track on the album! Instinct says it's either Risque or Daily Blues, but I'll happily relisten another ten times before voting.

Also, yeah, this is my favorite album from these guys... for now. Fully expecting them to better it, because I like The Silver Cord (extended; duhhh) and Phantom Island almost as much.

I've only dabbled with the Gizz, and am drawn to the metal stuff. First listen to this and it sounds like... (Abandoned Luncheonette) Hall & Oates? Hahaha.

My favorite *moment* in all Gizzard is on Le Risque

"evil knievel" right?

i'm not sure if they do it this way live every time, but this killed me: https://bootleggizzard.bandcamp.com/track/le-risque-live-at-field-of-vision-25

the way "le risque" just escalates until the final second and then the drum stick clicks and *that riff* come in for "flight b741" might be my favorite moment on this thing.

it's hard not to vote for "le risque" honestly. that whole final section got me bellowing along every time. from memory:

where softest souls do sleep
in the hush of morning's glow
i rest not
i cannot
i just go

the risk
my muse
for its focus i depend
nosedive into the ocean
do dangerous shit and transcend

this world
it spins to slow
its tempo paints my world in gray
my heart cannot beat fast enough the risk is technicolor paint

ONE LIFE
ONE CHANCE
CLENCH THE MOMENT IN YOUR HANDS

ADRENALINE MY DEAREST FRIEND IT'S YOU AND ME UNTIL
THE
END.

*four drum stick clicks*
*huge butt rock riff appears*

It's gnawing at me that my Hall & Oates comment might have seemed like a piss take - it wasn't! More of a stunned, 'wtf, is there anything they can't do, I didn't see that coming' response. Anyway, just wanted to say. Will leave this space to the heads.

no not at all haha, it made me listen to that hall and oates song - i had no idea they got so jazzy.

i was trying to imagine which of these tracks made you think of the h&o song

It was the opening track tbh - made me think of that H&O album, and probably the track 'Everytime I Look At You'. But very much the general sound of that album.

haha i can hear that. i didn't realize h&o were so funky early on. ok yeah this major key chorus sounds like "mirage city" to me too. someone in the comments describes it as a mash-up of earth wind and fire, the beatles, and country music. there are a lot of 70s bands you could compare the sound of this album to. for some reason i have a hard time thinking of exactly who. it somehow just kind of lifts a feeling. i'd say the kind of feeling it lifts is one i encounter in a lot of "butt rock". someone in the "butt rock" thread here says butt rock is the following:

1) It's too commercial or "slick" / inauthentic

2) You can dance to it

3) It "rocks" anyway

and just right now, listening to seger's "feel like a number" - yeah, that's the feeling. kind of unapologetically catchy, feel-good, with "rootsy" touches. but the guitar sound is obviously harsher than that and comes out of punk and garage and psych rock. someone over on the other kg&lw thread, i think it was hunter, was pointing out there's a lot of blooze harmonica going on. i like it personally, i think the texture of it really works with everything else. stu's production is pretty sick imo. everything is very loud and compressed it's true, but there's a subtlety to how everything gels together. sort of a blunted dry sound to the drums. how the guitars sort of swim together in these loud, brash, glowy lines, weaving in and out of everything else.

the boys do a fair amount of "hollerin" on this record, for lack of a better term. they make lots of animal sounds too.

i think the heart of this record is mostly in the melodies, the vocals and the lyrics. the lyrics are just so good. i don't know how they can take sentiments that are in all honesty closely related to inspirational facebook memes and turn them into casual gold. i think it's because you can tell they come out of lived experience. there is absolutely a bracing, refreshing honesty to them. and someone in the band, or maybe more than one person, obviously has some first-hand experience with crippling anxiety and depression. they want to sing about it in their songs! and sing about the whole crazy experience of being alive in our fucked up world right now. and they do it so well, so truthfully! at first it's almost .. shocking how little they care about sounding "cool". and yet they do anyway, obviously for putting so much frank feeling into the songs. all of that just makes lines like these very precious to me:

i'll just keep on winging it, there's always blue skies ahead
i'll just keep on winging it, gotta keep it all in the air
chin up, fly high
zenith ascent
i'll just keep on winging it, gotta keep it all in the air

I've played the album three times since the poll started. It's such a wondrous thing. No time just now to get anything meaningful into writing, but...! I'm still dazzled

"evil knievel" right?

And yes! Yes indeed! I love everything before and especially (as you detail) everything after too, but I swear, that joyful shout of whichever beautiful Gizzard vocalist is singing at that moment is my personal epitome of this band's reckless, friendly, ridiculous spirit.

It feels a little wrong to be trying to pick a favorite song actually, this thing is such a journey.

yeah, each track is a unique highlight on a path. it's so well-balanced! the plane metaphor is lightly employed when it needs to be but it also has some heft to it. like we're all on this ride together but we're also all feeling ungrounded to a degree.

i burned a cd of this to listen to in my car. i may have already said that somewhere else idk. i rounded it out with a couple of the live versions of tracks from this album that they played in buena vista. "raw feel" is lovely. "le risque" is a blast. "daily blues" epic and touching.

no other band has me making "drummer face" so much.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i'm kinda biting my nails to see how many votes this got. i hope more than 10 lol. well ilm better get ready because i'm gonna poll phantom island next and be insufferably mawkish and corny about how it's my album of the year.

i was saying over on the geese thread that increasingly music made by twenty-somethings feels a little not-for-me. these guys are a major exception. they kinda make music for older people though? they are definitely on the opposite side of cool vs a band like geese.

ha I agree with that, I cannot hang with any modern indie whatsoever but I am onboard with these guys

I said this on another thread but yeah these guys do not look like rock stars, they look like guys who wandered into the studio from the D&D game next door

yeah. a thing they did that say, geese would never do is have a bunch of special needs kids of fans up on the stage for a cool fucking jam at their three-day festival in the rocky mountains. love these boys to death.

i'm starting a little vacay and wearing my gizz tee to get in the spirit of it. this poll closes while we're in the desert.

My guess is four or five votes, but it would be great to see more.

It's Daily Blues for me after all. I think they could've gotten away with omitting the track breaks and putting this album out as having only "Side A" and "Side B", like Thick as a Brick or A Passion Play -- structurally, it *is* that prog! And Daily Blues does that "endlessly unspooling prog epic" thing within its own runtime.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Nooo, Mirage City has no business getting 0 votes! What have I done!

ok finally giving this a listen, I can totally hear why TheNuNuNu is into it so much, its sorta like a Happy End album

also would like to say "Hog Calling Contest" got robbed. that is some straight up yeehaw music

i'm casting pearls before me

i'm happy to see 'rats in the sky' got a vote. amazing melody. joke's on you / you stupid men / i just went to the costume shop / and i bought myself some wings!

i had to vote for le risque but seriously anything else here is voteable. 'flight b741' is such a gorgeous, cosmic song. there's a bit in it ... 'have you traveled far / far away .. faaaarrr' ... the vocal arrangement does kind of a multi-part thing that reminds me of early bee gees or the beach boys. such an effortless floating feeling to that song. sometimes when i start this album, i don't fully jump in until 'raw feel' which gets me every time with its anthemic-ness. 'field of vision' is stone cold butt rock awesomeness. 'sad pilot' always delivers the feelings... 'i've been drinkin .. on the job'. 'antarctica' has bite and is just incredibly funky. ok that's enough praise for now lol.