KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD - PHANTOM ISLAND - P(DOOM)

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard release their 27th album Phantom Island, out June 13th on their own p(doom) records. As lead up, they've unveiled three glimpses into their lushly orchestrated and most ambitious album to date: the jazz-tinged title track, the absolute rave-up “Deadstick," and most recently the tender-yet-propulsive “Grow Wings and Fly.” The accompanying video clip for the latter features an aquatic Ambrose Kenny-Smith being gently returned to the waters from whence he came. Find yourself someone that looks lovingly into your eyes the way Joey Walker does to Kenny-Smith. 

“There are so many strange and beautiful ways to grow wings and fly,” explains video director Hayden Somerville. “We had a very special time down the coast with the band and our crew, releasing our sea creature—who somehow makes me feel a little ill and completely full of joy at the same time.”

Phantom Island marks the band’s second release on their own (p)doom records label, and sees our intrepid heroes add a new dimension to their ever-evolving songcraft, embracing the symphonic and embroidering their tangles of lysergic riff and melody with strings and horns and woodwind. 

If Flight b741 was an album of rambunctious adventure stories, Phantom Island picks up that thread, spinning its tales of quests and piracy out into the stars. But it’s a more interior album than its predecessor, more melancholy – more “introverted”, bandleader Stu Mackenzie says. Sure, these are tales of high adventure in galaxies far, far away, but the focus is less on the action, and more on the interior lives of those adventurers, reflecting the kind of insight Gizz have gleaned from 15 years of travelling the world and leaving their homes behind to take their music to the people. There’s a wiser, more mature, more sensitive Gizz at play here, questioning their place within the universe, their responsibilities, the ties that bind. “When I was younger, I was just interested in freaking people out,” admits Mackenzie, “but as I get older, I'm much more interested in connecting with people.”

King Gizzard will embark on their 2025 Phantom Island orchestral tour this July. Featuring a different accompanying 29-piece orchestra in each city - and ably led by conductor & music director Sarah Hicks - the tour will see the group perform with some of the country’s most renowned ensembles, before concluding with Field of Vision, the band’s own 3-day residency camping event at Meadow Creek in Buena Vista, CO. This represents the band’s only U.S. tour of 2025, so don’t miss out on your fix for a full calendar year.