King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard — Sketches of Brunswick East

Flightless · ATO · Heavenly | discogs.com

Chill vibes from Melbourne’s favourite psych-rockers

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These guys are insanely prolific. Sketches is the group’s eleventh studio album since forming in 2010, and is their third this year. Two more are promised by Christmas.

Perhaps you imagine an unfiltered stream of musical chaff, a constant deluge of unformed ideas and first impressions and whatever is passing through their minds rushed from concept to release with maximum expediency.

You imagine incorrectly. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are admirably judicious, to the shame of many with considerably humbler repertoire.

They paint from the general palate of psych-rock, ably balancing grime (such as that of June’s Murder of the Universe) with goof (a focal point of February’s Flying Microtonal Banana). The rough edges of early pioneers — recall Beatles acolytes of the seventies — have softened into something far more palatable in the intervening decades, the bright and brash and glaring aggression long since tempered.

Sketches is plump and pliable, centring itself around various wiggles and flanges of guitar, garnished with pings of vibraphone and rivulets of organ, all tied together with an imaginative selection of jazzy elasticated basslines. It has a pleasantly loose, improvisational feel to it. The band takes an idea, bounces it around for a few minutes, then moves onto the next one. Nothing is analysed especially rigorously, but nothing is exhausted either.

You don’t have to conjure high-concept stakes for inspiration. Just gather some artistically-minded friends and look out your window.