Giving Bob Pollard, Oh Sees and Ty Segall a run for their prolific money, Australia's King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard just released their 16th studio album since forming 10 years ago. After experiments in boogie and thrash, new album K.G. finds the band making a sonic sequel of sorts to 2017's Flying Microtonal Banana, in that it's another record that uses quarter-tone tuning. What does that mean? More notes to play with. Songs have a bit of an Eastern tilt -- Indian śruti music uses microtonal scales -- but I'm not sure the average listener (this writer included) would notice if not explicitly told about it apart from wondering "hey, is that a sitar?" However they arrived at the finished product, K.G. is an enjoyable King Gizzard record, whether they're giving us windswept acoustic psych ("Straws in the Wind"), groovy flower power jams ("Minimum Brain Size") or galloping spaghetti western rock ("Ontology").
K.G. also marks the group's first real forays into electronic dance music, and "Intrasport," which dabbles in acid house in a Charanjit Singh sort of way, is promising enough to warrant further exploration. As a band who clearly enjoys the challenge of high concepts and creative challenges, we may see it happen.