Every Saturday I use the Discogs Randomizer Gizmo to pick a record from my collection and write about it here.
Pretty excited about this week’s spin—one of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s (KGLW) more avant-garde works. Keep in mind as you read this that this is their second full-length release—right now, in the year of our lord 2024, they are a year removed from their 25th studio release, all in the space of 12 years.
I know I keep saying I am going to do a mega post on an introduction to the Gizzverse, but life seemingly keeps getting in the way, but fear not, it is coming. KGLW is well-known amongst their faithful for their genre-bending and blending. This album really stands out because it is essentially a spoken word spaghetti western. Like radio shows of old, the band provides music to set the scene while Broderick Smith1, father of band member Ambrose Kenny-Smith, narrates the story that he wrote.
My copy is the so-called official reissue, as the original was limited to 500 copies pressed to blue wax and was an Australia only release. Y’all should see the prices on that, let’s just say an OG copy is prohibitively expensive. One change, other than the color of the wax, is the cover art was re-imagined. The inner sleeve has the original album art though.
If you squint you can make out some of that narrative in which frontman and mixing wizard, Stu Mackenzie, describes a very DIY approach to laying down the tracks for this album. They used his parents’ garage and rigged two mics up to lay down the tracks before sending them to Broderick who wrote, as Mackenzie says, “…sometimes the music inspiring the words or the words inspiring the music.” You can definitely hear dogs barking in the background of “The Killing Ground”, but it adds to and fits right in with the sonic imagery
I won’t spoil the story for you, give it a listen, its 27 minutes of badass western film score-esque rock. As it stands now, this album sets itself apart from KGLW’s catalog, even though each time they drop a new album its something different, but they haven’t tried to rehash the spaghetti western sound…yet.
Sadly, Broderick Smith died last year only a few months before he was going to take the stage with KGLW at the Hollywood Bowl. It would have been pretty epic to hear them play this album in its entirety live, and probably would have made for an excellent live release.
Check it out and let me know what you think, get lost in a short, but gripping western tale.
Of early 70s Australian country-rock band, The Dingoes.
A rare Dingoes sighting! They were on domestic (U.S.) A&M Records, as I recall! Maybe 2 or 3 albums. Don't recall a note of theirs, and I never had any of their albums...just remember stocking them, late '70s at the record store I worked at! What a bizarre attack for King Gizzard....you nailed it: Badass western film-score rock!