King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island | Album Review
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p(doom) records
Well, well, well. Once again, we find ourselves back in the Gizzverse. It wasn’t even a year ago that I was here telling you all about how death, taxes, and King Gizzard are life’s only certainties. And what did they go and do? They proved me right.
The Aussie psych-rock experimenters’ 27th(!!) album, Phantom Island, started with extras from the Flight b741 sessions. These songs were born out of the same hyper-collaborative energy as b741, but the band felt like they needed something else to be complete. After linking with the LA Philharmonic during their 2023 marathon show at the Hollywood Bowl, the Gizzards realized that live orchestrals were exactly what they needed to complete the circle. They connected with Chad Kelly, who created arrangements to accompany the meandering jams and stitched-together hooks locked in the Gizz vault.
Phantom Island reimagines Gizzard’s home-grown rock-centric sound, filtering it through the lens of an opera house symphony orchestra. The symphonics are overdubbed atop the messy, chaotic jams, creating a mix of meticulous arrangements and free-wheeling improv that feels quintessentially Gizzard. Stu Mackenzie used a Tascam 8-track to blend the two sounds, combining them into one rock orchestra mashup. Phantom Island propels the sky-high, airborne stories of b741 into outer space. Gizzard broke through the atmosphere, sending their sound and their stories to another dimension. The result is an album that feels animated and colorful, even with its more insular narratives. When I close my eyes and listen, this feels like the soundtrack of its own movie or musical, bouncing between styles without losing cohesion. Would I be surprised if they turned this into a stage show? Not even a little—why shouldn’t King Gizz have their own Gamehendge? They dropped a “making of” documentary on YouTube last week, a 13-minute look into bringing the orchestrations into their cosmic sprawl. On the other side of the glass wall, the Gizzards sit on a couch in their flight uniforms from the “Le Risque” music video, heads hanging back as they listen to their jam fragments intertwine with the lush strings or grooving horns.
I’ve always loved King Gizz for their instrumentation. The high school band nerd in me is partial to Mackenzie’s penchant for flute, but I also remember being entranced by their dueling drum sets the first time I saw them live (Brooklyn Steel 2018, I almost passed out because I got too high). Gizz has always had inklings of symphonics in them, but Phantom Island is spacious, giving them more room to go on rambling tangents, switch from biker rock to chamber orchestrals, and delve even deeper into a narrative throughline. The album takes the listener on a journey from outer space to the underworld, with tales of being lost at sea (“Aerodynamic”), flying in a spaceship (“Spacesick”), or speeding down an anonymous open road (“Eternal Return”). Each song chronicles a different adventure and sometimes a different adventurer—whether or not the characters across the record are the same person, they’re all on their own journeys within the same greater universe.
Phantom Island opens with the title track, a jazz-funk jam that provides us with our setting: a feverish dreamland where nothing is what it seems (“Is this mental confusion or have I finally found my purpose?” and “The palm tree’s looking at me funny with a sideways belligerence”). The song unravels into its own miniature rock opera (“Phantom Island / Insane asylum” is now what my brain plays while returning to factory settings), making it clear early that nothing on Phantom Island is what it seems.
The strings take center stage by the time we get to “Lonely Cosmos,” arpeggiating through unsettling minor chords and mixing with flute before fading into a sole acoustic guitar. It’s the send-off into space and the subsequent realization of your prolonged solitude. Where b741’s existentialism was strategic and hidden, Phantom Island gets right down into it. The unnerving string theme returns after the line “Are we alone in this cosmic effigy?” bending into its own dark, tangential underworld before yanking itself out of it, propelling back into its punchy acoustic melody with the line “I’m inhaling stardust.” It’s so casually random that I can’t help but chuckle. It’s that constant back-and-forth that keeps you on your toes, even when the orchestrals are at their most overpowering.
“Eternal Return” and “Panpsych” are the most b741 of the bunch, leaning psychedelic rock while still using the orchestrals as a central counterpoint. “Eternal Return” mixes spiky guitars and saxophone with sweeping strings and double-tracked vocals, creating a 360-degree sound that speaks to the song’s theme of being “on a round-trip perpetual.” “Panpsych” is equally as fuzzy and jam-centric, with flute tying the main theme together through cryptic lyrics (“The wind whispers secret message for those who’ve grown ears to hear it”).
Gizz holds the theme of “Lonely Cosmos” close through all of Phantom Island’s wandering journeys. Subsequent tracks place their characters in isolation, stranded or lost or eons away from anything familiar. “Spacesick” follows a nauseated astronaut on his first trip to space, already fantasizing about being back at home. “Aerodynamic” finds a lone sailor contemplating his last moments at sea. “Sea of Doubt” combines twangy country rock with pensive introspection, toying with anxiety, uncertainty, and the need for friends to help bring you back to yourself. Its opening is so bright and eager that the first lines, literally being “I’m on the edge of a cliff,” have delayed impact. The airy delivery, combined with the crisp guitar tones and trilling woodwinds, conflicts with the tension in the lyrics, namely in the lines about anxiety landslides, mind forests, and treading water. Two-thirds of the way through, the strings pull away, leaving just acoustic and vocals. A sweet falsetto, a harmonizing flute, a sigh of relief. “Here comes the sun to clear the fog / Here comes a friend for me to lean on”—bordering on corny, but its simplicity and gentle sincerity tugs at the heartstrings, an unexpected softness from the same guys who conjured sludge, fire, and thrash metal on PetroDragonic Apocolypse just two years ago.
By my twentieth trip around Phantom Island, it became clear that the whole journey could very well just be in my head, and that is precisely the point. The album drifts between structure and instinct, between story and sound. You can follow the narrative if you want, or simply let the whole thing wash over you. It will consume you regardless. The deeper you go, the harder it is to tell whether you’re hearing a rock record dressed up in strings or a symphony unraveling into a jam. Either way, we can take comfort in the fact that the Gizzverse keeps expanding.
Cassidy is a culture writer and researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including, but not limited to, rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Substack.
