King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have confirmed some key details about their 27th album, Phantom Island.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have confirmed some key details about their 27th album, Phantom Island. No release date has been announced yet for the 10-track companion to last year’s Flight b741, but a video for the song “Deadstick” will arrive April 15, the same day the band sits for a Reddit AMA conversation.
“A lot of love and time and energy and patience and growth went into this one,” group member Stu Mackenzie wrote on Instagram of Phantom Island, which features heavy orchestration and string arrangements and was written simultaneously with b741. “Can’t wait to grow wings and fly with all of you.”
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“We chose the more rowdy, rambunctious songs that felt like they needed to all be together,” group member Ambrose Kenny-Smith previously told SPIN of how the Flight b741 material was divided. “This way, it would sound like more of a party — more loose, more dad rock, more garage, more upbeat. The others seemed to be a bit more spacious, more strung out, maybe even a bit more singer/songwriter-y. They have more sparseness to them. They’re more laidback. We decided to split them up, and that’s what the 27th album is turning into.”
The title cut was previously released as a single last October. Meanwhile, closer “Grow Wings and Fly” was frequently teased in live performances last year.
Beginning in mid-May, Gizzard will play multi-show residencies in such off-the-beaten-path European venues as a former prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, and a 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater in Plovdiv, and in late July, the band will be back in the U.S. for their first-ever shows backed by local symphonies. Perhaps best of all: Gizzard will debut their own festival, Field of Vision, from Aug. 15-17 in the beautiful outdoor setting of Buena Vista, Co., where they will play three distinct sets amid a lineup of friends such as Babe Rainbow, King Stingray and DJ Crenshaw.
Here is the track list for Phantom Island:
Phantom Island
Deadstick
Lonely Cosmos
Eternal Return
Panpsych
Spacesick
Aerodynamic
Sea of Doubt
Silent Spirit
Grow Wings and Fly
It’s the finale of the first leg of the tour, after which the band returned to Australia to finish a string arrangement-dominated companion album tracked simultaneously with b741 plus another distinct LP about which they will not yet say much. The former, which is likely to be released this spring, was heralded last October by the heavily orchestrated brain-melter “Phantom Island.”
“We chose the more rowdy, rambunctious songs that felt like they needed to all be together,” Kenny-Smith says of how the Flight b741 material was divided. “This way, it would sound like more of a party — more loose, more dad rock, more garage, more upbeat. The others seemed to be a bit more spacious, more strung out, maybe even a bit more singer/songwriter-y. They have more sparseness to them. They’re more laidback. We decided to split them up, and that’s what the 27th album is turning into.”
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