The Top 25 Albums Of 2021 (So Far): King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - 'Butterfly 3000'

Just when you think that you might, just maybe, even a little bit, have a feel for what King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are about, they pull something else out of their collective hats and teach us, once again, to always expect the unexpected from them. 

Butterfly 3000, the 18th studio album from the Melbourne collective and second release for 2021, is the exact example of this. 

Considered and refined, Butterfly 3000 has not only offered another evolution in the King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard sound - remembering that so far they've covered everything from an Ennio Morricone-style Western soundscape with Eyes Like The Sky to speed metal with Infest The Rats' Nest in the space of nine years. 

This time 'round we see an indie-pop incarnation, with the co-vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Stu Mackenzie calling the process a "group challenge" where they recorded in isolation in their own homes, working without their usual process of “throwing a lot of shit at the wall and finding that magic take, or building something with 20 tracks of guitar overdub”, all while writing all the in major key for the first time and trialling new equipment like modular synthesizers. 

“We were trying to make upbeat dance music, in our own way, and we’d never gone there before," he said. 

It's been an out and out success and will go down as one of their all-time greats.