The Silver Cord (studio album) by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

From spigelwii 11/16/2023 15:10

Following the trail blazed by the excellent Butterfly 3000, KGLW goes all-in on synth for better or for worse with The Silver Cord. While the core concept of the album is strong and the trademark song-to-song flow is still immaculate, Gizz's typically virtuosic songwriting stumbles for the first time since 2017's Gumboot Soup.

It's not even that the songs are bad. Some of them are quite fantastic and the majority serve the purpose of the record just fine. I guess what I'm trying to say (as my review becomes less and less articulate by the second) is that maybe KGLW is...running out of new things to say and is merely searching for new instruments through which to say them at this point? (As a self-proclaimed huge fan, it feels almost blasphemous to say; Thank you for the free therapy session, BestEverAlbums.)

Alright, now that's out of the way, here's some actual content for you: The opening trio of Theia -> Silver Cord -> Set IS creatively energizing, moves as one piece, and serves as the strongest grouping of tunes on the short record. The thumping faux-house Set is the highlight, a truly complete song concept with a gloriously absurd rap. From there, the album loses steam: Chang'e meanwhile derives its musical influence from any number of Shanghai jams that emerged over the last couple of tours (yes, I listen to all the live shows too), but doesn't really do anything particularly engaging. Gilgamesh is the sonic equivalent of a cynical money-making sequel after the original (Set) was a surprise box-office smash. The second piece of a two-part whole, Swan Song follows imperceptibly and trances out to a four-on-the-floor zombie beat awash in every variety of synth sound on the market. Self-indulgent? Yes. Badass? Also kinda yes. Extinction, the final track, wades around in the shallow end of all of this and fades out harmlessly instead of serving as any sort of definitive punctuation mark.

Don't kill me guys; it's not a bad album, just an inconsistent and creatively risk-averse one. And for KGLW, that might actually be the worst case scenario.

P.S. The Extended Mixes version of the album, which I did NOT review here, adds a huge amount of value to the songs present on the "mainstream" version. No matter how I feel about a given song on Silver Cord, the synth jams tacked on to each of 'em here sure are damn tasty.