My Favorite New Album Is Amazing. And It's FREE - Go Get IT!

I'm going through that first flush of love with an album, where you listen to it again and again, where you're figuring out lyrics (what? what does that even mean?), and discovering new sounds in the layers in the mix as they unpack with repeat exposure - repetition allowing the sound to expand the way a fine red wine opens up as it breathes. And yet? You can't listen to it every time you want to, lest you burn out on it - one must be careful! Though with such immersion actual listening isn't always absolutely necessary anymore, as the music now rotates on the radio in your mind... a beautiful thing!

I wish it happened to me more often... as a long-time radio veteran, I've heard so much music. Between what's sent to me promotionally for possible radio play and what I seek out and explore on my own, I'm exposed to new music every day - which I love, don't get me wrong. But hearing that much, you do get a little jaded and harder to please over time. Sure, you find lots of stuff that's really good, and songs you know folks will like that you can play on the air, but stuff that really hits YOU, that penetrates down deep, cracks through your crusty, jaded exterior? That stuff doesn't come around very often.

When it does? It's AWESOME!! Then I want to shout about it from the rooftops! Tell the world how AMAZING the music is! Play it for everyone I know. Write blog posts about it (!) Give it to people, if I can - love to share music, so when there's music I really love, I get the powerful urge to share it around.

Very happy I can share Polygondwanaland with you! This unexpected pleasure came my way via a tip on facebook left on a thread I was part of. Glad I noticed. Because it's the best Progressive Rock album I've heard in a long, long time! Didn't expect I'd be saying that about one of the FIVE albums released last year by Australian psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

Yeah. Five. Beginning in February with the experimental Flying Microtonal Banana, followed by Murder of the Universe, then their cosmic jazz collaboration with Alexander Brettin, the Los Angeles-based Mild High Club, Sketches of Brunswick East. Polygondwanaland came out in mid-November, and number five Gumboot Soup in the final days of December. It was an article on Gumboot Soup's release shared on facebook that spawned the Polygondwanaland tip.

I knew of the band, had sampled some of their earlier stuff but didn't really like it. Don't remember now what album that was. Didn't like their name too much, either. Seemed silly. But Ed Pinka from ATO's Promotion department, King Gizzard's label, kept sending me their material, said he thought I'd be into them, probably not for the radio, but for my own ears. He kept trying. But my copy of Flying Microtonal Banana just sat there, unplayed. Sometimes that happens, there are things you mean to get to but just, somehow... don't.

I'd heard they were trying to release five albums in 2017. A comment on the shared article said "Crumbling Castles" on Polygondwanaland, the last album, was pretty killer. Spotify had some crazy promotion where you could sign up for three months for ninety-nine cents, so I'd done that in mid-December. Made it easy to call up Polygondwanaland and proceed to blow my mind. It was as if I was listening to an album made especially for me. Hit me that strong.

This was not expected.

"Crumbling Castle" is indeed killer. In some ways, the ten-minute plus long first song sets the tone for the rest of the album, with shifting, complex time signatures, intricate drum fills, interweaving guitars, arpeggiating synthesizers, and the occasional psychedelic freak out sort-of-tamed in service to the song.  But the heavy final minute or so then gives way to the much lighter and more intricate second track, "Polygondwanaland" - which flows into the next track, and the one after that.

A word about the track listing - it lies. Looks like there are nine songs after "Crumbling Castle". Not really. There are three, as they run together in sets of three - "Polygondwanaland - The Castle In The Air - Deserted Dunes Welcome Weary Feet", "Inner Cell - Loyalty - Horology", and "Tetrachromancy - Searching...-The Fourth Colour" - each about ten minutes long. And very delicious! They also refer to each other lyrically, giving all nine, er, three, a sense of interconnectedness.

The lyrics are vague enough to allow for interpretation. Each triptych seems to see a fantasy played out to a twisted extreme - an adventure getaway back in time, too bad the dinosaurs will eat you - resist a tyrant only to become tyrannical, raise a leader who demands loyalty, who finally thinks himself a god and destroys you - there is a magical fourth colour you can train yourself to see, maybe, or not, until you do and think yourself a god. That's my interpretation of them. Could be right. Or not.

The lyrics sound really cool when they're sung in the context of the music. Plus, I prefer vague and mysterious to cliched and banal. Don't you?

And the music is amazing - cool time signatures on a nice mix of percussion, sweet acoustic, finger-picked guitar and powerful electric leads, occasional retro-cool keyboard solos and fills, a spoken word section, even a tastefully applied flute! As an older Prog Rock fan, I found the vocals and phrasing at times reminiscent of classic Canterbury Proggers Caravan. Even the music, at times, reminded me of Caravan, albeit with a bit more muscle. Which made me quite happy, actually. Always liked "harder" edged Caravan songs, and kind of wished they'd done more, even evolved in that direction.

Ta-da! King Gizzard has fulfilled my wish! My wish was their command!

I'm joking. Sort of.

It's not just Caravan, there are shades of several classic Prog Rock bands haunting this album, including Gentle Giant, Wishbone Ash, even a little of the other King, Crimson. Not sure that's intentional, because it sounds effortless and natural. This isn't an homage, nor a tribute. There's authenticity to the expression. This is King Gizzard, not any of those other bands.

Wonder if they've got any more like this in them? I'm a little afraid King Gizzard won't ever make an album like Polygondwanaland again. This could be their one and only lighter Prog Rock album. They did give it away - what does that mean? Did they give it away free because it was kind of a joke to them? I hope not. I think it's brilliant - a superb album.

And you can get it for free! Go to their site via the following link - they have audio files (mp3s/wavs) for regular downloads and sets mastered for CD and vinyl. Plus, album artwork!

http://kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com/polygondwanaland/index.html