Thoughts on Fishing for Fishies (2019) by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

So just today, actually, my favorite band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, released their newest full-length album, Fishing for Fishies.

And honestly, it's pretty banging.

Anyone who knows anything about King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is that they don't stick to one style. I used to refer to them as a psychedelic rock band, but that's not even accurate. In the past, they've gone from garage rock to spaghetti western to psychedelic rock and jazz to progressive rock to pop rock, nailing every style.

In Fishing for Fishies, they basically drop any hints of psychedelia and do what I can only really describe as boogie rock with synth influences. And like their other experiments, this works very well.

In the first track, Fishing for Fishies, they start with a somewhat acoustic country/blues-like tune that evokes comfort and happiness. As the album progresses, they add synths more and more until the closing track, Cyboogie, has an instrumental ensemble that is all synths and drums. This progression is done very well and the instrumentation itself is very nice. Listening to Fishing to Fishies and Cyboogie back to back, you wouldn't expect them to be on the same album, but it fits very well when listening to the album as a whole.

The lyrics are also very interesting. Some of them are very blatant in what they're trying to say (especially in Plastic Boogie), but some of them take a few listens to get the meaning. I really like those kinds of lyrics, personally; being able to think a lot about the lyrics make the songs more interesting. They also give off interesting themes; Fishing for Fishies (the track) is talking about how the protagonist (the singer) is fishing, but he doesn't like fishing because it hurts the fish (it sounds more interesting than I can put it), and Acarine is a song about acarine disease, which is a debilitating disease that affects bees, and the lyrics and instrumentation are dark to deal with this.

The only real criticisms I can think of this album right now is some of the mixing. It's a little sloppy in Acarine and especially Cyboogie, and it makes it hard to understand the lyrics sometimes. The Cyboogie single came out in January, and ever since then, I've guessed as to a lot of the lyrics, and I only just found out the real ones the other day when someone on reddit posted the lyrics from his vinyl copy. But really, that's the only thing I have to complain about.

Fishing for Fishies is a really interesting experimental album by my favorite band, taking it in directions it hasn't gone before. I massively enjoyed this record, and though it's not my favorite, I have fourteen other records by them to choose from, all in different styles, so it's not surprising. I'd highly recommend anyone who likes boogie-style rock or an appreciation for music to check it out.

My favorite tracks, as of me writing this, include This Thing, Acarine, Fishing for Fishies, and The Cruel Millennial.