King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's New Song Is Like The Flaming Lips On Different Drugs

The marketing routine used to be easy to follow: release an album every year-or-so, take a single or two from it, tour, repeat. But that model has pretty much gone to hell, in various manners.

Case in point #1: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, preparing you for their second album this year – fucksake people, it’s only April – with something that can hardly be described as a single, or even a focus track. So, if you’ve got 13-odd minutes to spare, may we (or rather they…) present Han-Tyumi & The Murder Of The Universe (ATO/Flightless), which they described as a ‘Chapter’ of their next thing. In the great prog and psychedelic traditions, it’s your standard dystopian vision of the future with guitar wigouts, rolls of Deep Purple organ, with occasional outbreaks of spoken word, apparently from the viewpoint of the ‘confused cyborg’ of the title, adding a touch of Hitchhikers’ Guide to it. With me so far? Well done you. It’s The Flaming Lips on different drugs. Some listeners will smirk knowingly, others will go ‘Yeah maaaan, they know stuff…’.

Case in point #2: It’s only seems a couple of weeks since I fanboyed over Frank Ocean’s latest release. Oh wait, it was only a couple of weeks. But here’s something else new he’s casually flung out to the world. Biking (Boys Don’t Cry) is a different kind of Frank, more recalling his hip-hop days rather than the treated confessional soul to which we’ve become used. It’s open, resigned yet accepting to who he is, as it takes its feet off the pedals and coasts downhill, and even comes with mention of the OFWGKTA banner just to confuse the issue further. Oh, guests — you want guests? Having Jay Z aboard can’t hurt, although past loyalties mean there’s also input from the often personally execrable Tyler, The Creator — who could really just fuck off and you wouldn’t much notice the difference. But it’s another grand thing from this extraordinary artist. 

Then there’s those who go missing for a while, and come back a little changed. Husky’s eponymous Husky Gawenda, followed a great Australian musical tradition of another century and had decamped to Berlin to let himself grow a bit. He announces his return to the fray with Ghost (Liberation), and while that voice is still identifiable, the folk base of what he does has altered a bit. This is more of a big indie pop model, programmed drums and keyboard punctuations through him pondering more mature worries, but dealing with them. You kind of hope his constituency can grow up with him.

Also missing for a while, but returning familiar in form and function the breezy tones of long-time indie pop darlings St Etienne. An upcoming album, Home Counties, has them pondering life from the suburban commuter belt around London with Magpie Eyes (Heavenly/Inertia), the ideal soundtrack of Sarah Cracknell musing on the nature passing by out the train window, as you listen to your iPod (or possibly cassette Walkman…) as the insistent rhythm of the rails carries you into town for another day at the coalface.

Of course, if you end up working for the man for too long it eats at your soul, and old-style punk rebellion is on the cards. Cable Ties go from yelling on the inside to howling in trebly frustration across the near-seven minutes of Say What You Mean (Poison City), complete with suitably pissed-off spoken word diatribe section, leading to anarchy in the call centre. When the revolution comes, it’ll be the MacBooks first up against the wall. Apparently.

Slightly further along the timeline of olde-worlde punk, Mere Women take their cues from the arty melodrama of Siouxsie & The Banshees and that ilk. Big Skies (Poison City) is a run through a darkened forest over nearly tribal drumming heard from a distance as it yells at its own unease. Amy’s quite genuinely impressive voice has the right mix of swagger and panic to carry it off, and not be embarrassed by the comparisons.

But, if you’re looking for modern ‘pop music’ with a real international outlook, ‘our’ George Maple is likely the business. Always worth more than being just the featured sideperson to the likes of the Flume kiddie and DJ Snake, she’s finally operating with her own name as the banner to move her forward in her own right. Kryptonite (EMI) is of that contemporary synthesised soul model, with just a hint of mirror ball as its needs unfurl. If anything, you get the feeling it might do better in her adopted home(s) overseas than locally. But maybe that’s the point.

There can be few more philosophically whinges that suit and reflect the moment than Why Can’t I Get What I Want For Once? (Warhammer Kid). Pipsy, aka Paul Pouwels, hails from that magical land behind the wardrobe known as Dunedin – the southern New Zealand city once worthy of being designated its own ‘sound’. There are echoes of said sound in this – slightly psychedelic, some jangle and fuzz in the guitars over clenched emotions. And, as the title suggests, there is some existential grumpiness to it - but it comes with a necessary resigned shrug and some irony before it might have drowned in its own angst.