Quick List: Top 20 Songs of 2017

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and all that biz! It's time for my lists of favorite music of the year. I'm currently hard at work making an in-depth, detailed list of my top 20 albums of the year. So, to tide y'all over 'til then, here is a quick, commentary-free list of my top 20 songs of 2017!! Def czech the songs out on the accompanying Spotify playlist. I love each of these songs, and hope you'll enjoy them too! And I'd love to hear what songs you loved and couldn't stop bumpin' this year, down in the comments. Enjoy!

Top 20 Songs of 2017

20. St. Vincent - Pills
19. Open Mike Eagle - (How Could Anybody) Feel At Home
18. Alvvays - Dreams Tonite 
17. Joey Bada$$ - Rockabye Baby (ft. ScHoolboy Q)
16. Oh Sees - Keys to the Castle 
15. Father John Misty - Total Entertainment Forever
14. Algiers - The Underside of Power
13. Gorillaz - Ascension (ft. Vince Staples)
12. King Krule - Dum Surfer
11. Sufjan Stevens - Wallowa Lake Monster
10. Vince Staples - Big Fish
9. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - The Lord of Lightning
8. Oxbow - A Gentleman's Gentleman
7. Big K.R.I.T. - Big Bank (ft. T.I.)

6. Mount Eerie - Real Death
5. Converge - I Can Tell You About Pain
4. Kendrick Lamar - DNA.
3. Fleet Foxes - Third of May / Ōdaigahara
2. Tyler, the Creator - 911 / Lonely Boy
1. Lorde - Liability

Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy ALBUM REVIEW

Photo cred: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=54483116

If you had told me in 2016 that Lorde and Tyler, the Creator's new albums would be in my top 3 favorites of the year, I would've laughed at you. But yet, against all odds, here we are! If you're unfamiliar with Tyler, the Creator and why I should be so incredulous that I find myself loving his new album, Flower Boy, as much as I do, here's the basic rundown on him as an artist:

Tyler, the Creator is a LA-based rapper and producer, known as the main artist and de facto leader of the experimental, independent hip hop collective Odd Future (aka OFWGKTA). Prior to the release of this album, Tyler's career as a musician has been characterized mainly by an overwhelming sense of immaturity, primarily manifested in him focusing his music on cheap, insubstantial shock tactics: throwing hollow threats of homicide, patricide, infanticide, and other gratuitous violence; boasting about fictional rapes and other such misogynies; waiving around vague Satanic references and homophobic slurs; and otherwise trying to scare your mom as thoroughly as possible. These topics got him labelled, by some, as a "horrorcore" rapper, a subgenre of hip hop usually reserved for the most unpleasant, hedonistic rappers. However, unlike the scarier artists in the horrorcore genre, the teenage Tyler's shocking persona wore away very quickly.

I mean, it was kind of scary at first, on his debut mixtape, Bastard, in 2009, when the then 18-year-old Tyler was still shrouded in a layer of mystique and anonymity. But upon the release of his first full-length LP, Goblin, in 2011, it became painfully clear that all the talk of killing and eating people was just a flimsy act, one which he himself became very quick to break, to make sure people knew it was all "fiction" and to "not do anything that I say in [these songs], okay?" as stated in the intro to the song "Radicals," on that album.

After hearing this album, I really lost interest in Tyler, the Creator. Which I honestly thought was a shame, because, even though I've always been turned off by his gratuitously unwholesome subject matter, I always thought him an extremely talented rapper and beat producer, technically speaking, and that he had real charisma, behind the goofiness and cartoonish violence. Also, to his credit, I never felt like Tyler's villainous persona from those days was pure "fiction:" I thought the violent, hateful lyrics mostly served as an outlet for Tyler to express his very real, intense angst about his love life, anxieties, and especially his upbringing. But, even in spite of these things in his favor, the once-captivating Tyler, the Creator just seemed to deflate before my very eyes, continuing on with 2013's Wolf and 2015's Cherry Bomb.

Golf Wang. Photo cred: http://respect-mag.com/2017/07/tyler-creator-keeps-vintage-performs-911-late-show/

So, yes, believe me: I am as surprised as anyone to be sitting here today, in 2017, naming his new album Flower Boy as one of my favorite albums of the year. So what changed? In a word: EVERYthing. No one knows why, but seemingly overnight, Tyler, the Creator, the musician, has completely changed. Without any warning, he has dropped the hate, the violence, the anger, the misogyny, and most of all the fakeness that permeated his past work. He has killed off his persona of the past. In its place, Tyler gives us an album full of incredible sincerity, self-awareness, and real emotion. He shows us his sensitive side. He raps about loneliness and inadequacy. He sings about love and longing. Heck, he sings, which we've never heard before. I mean, the name of the album is Flower Boy for crying out loud. In short, it feels like we're finally seeing the real Tyler, unafraid to surrender at last to his genuine self.

And in being "his genuine self," he is really still the same Tyler we've seen hints of all along, behind the tough guy mask. He is still very, very depressed and anxious, even pessimistic, as on the opener "Foreword," where he wonders aloud "How many cars can I buy til I run out of drive? How much drive can I have til I run out of road?" He's still goofy and distracted, like on the skit track "Sometimes...." He still gets angry and aggressive, like on the single "Who Dat Boy." I mean, he's still him, in the best way--he's not saying, "I don't want to be the old me, so I'm going to cram myself into a box and call it the new me." He's just finally being his naked self. In fact if anything, after dropping his tough guy shell, Tyler seems more willing than ever to expose to us the full depths of his troubled, depressed, often suicidal mind, in ways that his therapist character on past albums never could.

Musically, this album is also a pretty vast departure from Tyler's past work, generally speaking. In contrast to the more harsh, aggressive instrumentals of his past work, most of the production on Flower Boy (with the main exception of "Who Dat Boy") is much gentler, warmer, even happier, to compliment Tyler's more introspective rapping, and his and the guest vocalists' singing. I mean, "See You Again" sounds like a straight-up alternative R&B ballad, something that would fit comfortably on a Frank Ocean album. This is something I never would've expected from Tyler. 

Swag. Photo cred: https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/07/20/tyler-the-creator-flower-boy-album-title/

And finally, you really can't talk about Flower Boy without talking about what was perhaps the biggest surprise of all: Tyler comes out of the closet on the album. Now, I mean, this is 2017, and entertainers revealing to the public that they are homosexual is usually nothing to write home about, in and of itself, and indeed, an artist's sexuality shouldn't have any bearing on a listener's reception of their work. For me, though, Tyler coming out was shocking because, until this year, he has been pretty unapologetically homophobic in his speech and lyrics, particularly in his love for the word "faggot" as a slur to be used against his enemies. 

Tyler coming out, and of course, abandoning that part of his speech with it, felt to me like Tyler's ultimate victory over fakeness. Tyler tells us on the Flower Boy track "I Ain't Got Time!" that he's been "kissing white boys since 2004." Tyler is fully embracing in himself something he had once scorned and derided, and in doing so, displays an incredible amount of bravery and maturity--risking being called a hypocrite or even being told that he's not actually homosexual, he's still just being a massive troll, lying about this to make his biggest attack on the LGBTQ community yet! Which, yes, unbelievably, has happened. To be so comfortable with this aspect of himself at last that he is willing to risk that kind of backlash shows a maturity that I don't think most people have. Make no mistake: Tyler is still in emotional turmoil throughout the album, but at least with this one facet of his kaleidoscopic identity, he seems finally at peace.

So, when I listen to or think about this album, honestly, the one word that comes to my mind is "victory:" Victory over insincerity. Victory over violence and vengefulness. Victory over self. Victory over the stigma, in hip hop culture, that "real" rappers must never be invulnerable. Victory over the immense weight of fame and the expectation to be who you've always been. Tyler, the Creator, with these 14 tracks, destroyed all of those barriers that had been holding him back. This album is as rich and dense and as complicated as a human being. I'm glad that human being is, specifically, Tyler, because I've always been fascinated by him and his potential. The future has never looked brighter for Tyler Gregory Okonma and the sunflower-laden hills stretch out wide before our hero, the unabashed Flower Boy.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5
Tyler, the Creator – Flower Boy
1. Foreword 2. Where This Flower Blooms 3. Sometimes... 4. See You Again 5. Who Dat Boy 6. Pothole 7. Garden Shed 8. Boredom 9. I Ain't Got Time! 10. 911 / Mr. Lonely 11. Droppin' Seeds 12. November 13. Glitter 14. Enjoy Right Now, Today	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

Lorde - Melodrama ALBUM REVIEW

Photo cred: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/
lorde/melodrama/buy/

Since I was on a mission throughout 2013 and most of 2014, I missed the sudden, wave-making arrival of Lorde onto the music scene back in 2013. Which also meant I was oblivious to its tectonically impactful lead single "Royals," which catapulted this naught-but-16-year-old girl into the stratosphere of pop stardom before any one could even blink. "Royals" was still so popular once my mission ended, about a year and a half after the single's release, that I very quickly got exposed to the song and its accompanying album Pure Heroine. I thought it wasn't a bad song, for a teenage pop up-and-comer, but it didn't captivate me by any means or make me want to check her album out. So, to be frank, until this album dropped, I never gave Pure Heroine or Lorde the time of day. And as three years proceeded to pass without a word from Lorde, I just subconsciously assumed she was another pop one-hit wonder.

But all that changed with the release of this new album, Melodrama. Out of seemingly nowhere, Lorde has come out of the shadows and released what I think is the best pop album of the year, and one of the most emotionally salient pop albums in recent memory. Where Pure Heroine was Lorde's hollow-sounding framework, showing her potential as a songwriter, Melodrama fills in the empty spaces with color and emotion and just plain good songwriting.

The best example of this may be the single "Liability." We find Lorde alone at a piano in a dark room, writing in a diary via keys and voice about lovers current and past. And it feels almost intrusive that we are here, too--watching and listening and peeking over her shoulder at this diary and all its intimate details. We watch as she confesses her insecurities and her deep, passionate emotions of love and regret towards a boy and towards herself most of all. Heartbreakingly, she concludes by agreeing with her emotionally aloof lovers: that it's always her fault when passion dies--she just isn't good enough.

With this song and other album stand-outs--"Writer in the Dark," "The Louvre," and "Supercut"--Lorde exhibits a rare gift to distill these complex, yet relatable emotional experiences not just into concise, smart lyrics, but also into immediate pop gems. The album, throughout its tracklist, recalls the best musical moment of artists with this same gift, like Adele, Whitney Houston, or even Alanis Morissette.

Now, of course, it isn't a perfect album or a masterpiece or anything. Lorde still succumbs to pop cliches, like on "Green Light," which begins promisingly enough with these same confessional lyrics and piano balladry mentioned earlier. But then the song just kind of stumbles into a dance pop, let-me-see-your-hands, singalong chorus that feels awkward and like she just didn't know what else to do after the verses. This same, safe kind of songwriting pops up on songs like "Homemade Dynamite" and "Hard Feelings/Loveless." Still, even if these songs aren't as bold and breathtaking as others on the album, they're still enjoyable enough pop pieces.

Lorde has definitely proven she has something special to say and a gift for saying it. As she continues to take risks and be bold like this, Lorde is quickly and impressively cementing her place among the pop greats, and away from the depressing one-hit wonder status that was previously threatening her. It will definitely be interesting to see if she can continue to produce solid material like this.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.0
Lorde – Melodrama
1. Green Light 2. Sober 3. Homemade Dynamite 4. The Louvre 5. Liability 6. Hard Feelings / Loveless 7. Sober II (Melodrama) 8. Writer In the Dark 9. Supercut 10. Liability (Reprise) 11. Perfect Places	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Sketches of Brunswick East ALBUM REVIEW

Photo credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/KGATLW/comments/
6o03x2/artwork_for_sketches_of_brunswick_east/

It's been one year since my last music review of any kind, the last album review being of Australian garage rock septet King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's triumphant, lo-fi opus Nonagon Infinity, which I absolutely loved. And in these twelve short intervening months, King Gizzard have given us three more albums, with allegedly two more to come by the end of the year. So, to say Stu Mackenzie and his cadre of musical miscreants have had a busy year would definitely be an understatement.

Not to mention they found time to make their American television debut on Conan in April!
Photo credit:https://livemusicblog.com/2017/04/18/watch-king-gizzard-the-lizard-wizard-the-lord-of-lightning-live-on-conan-4-17-17/

In February, we got the first of this year's releases, Flying Microtonal Banana, an album billed as an experiment in microtonal compositions. The songs were enjoyable enough, especially "Open Water" and lead single "Rattlesnake," but the microtonal aspect of the music really served as a melodic flavor served over King Gizzard's standard minor pentatonic blues fare rather than a compositionally defining characteristic of the music harmonically. It was a good album, but just not the most memorable or musically diverse project in their discography.

Next, in June, came the much hyped and quite polarizing Murder of the Universe. It served as both a narrative and musical sequel to Nonagon Infinity, sharing a large amount of the lyrical ideas, defining melodies, and rhythmic motifs of its 2016 sister. The main turn off for many people was the heavy, heavy use of spoken word throughout each song of the album. Myself, I felt like it was at times definitely too much, but at other points, particularly on the last third of the album, I felt the spoken word really added a lot, giving the music a unique and memorable angle. Either way, it certainly helped King Gizzard tell (and I think finish?) the story told on Nonagon Infinity and started on 2014's I'm In Your Mind Fuzz. 

Now onto Sketches of Brunswick East. Given how incredibly dense Murder of the Universe was, I think all of us King Gizzard listeners--both those who loved that album and those who didn't--needed a cleansing of our palates and a change of pace. This year's third album for King Gizzard (and their 11th overall), Sketches of Brunswick East, provides just that. Far removed from the megaton-heavy, blistering, psych rock marathons that were Nonagon and Murder, Sketches of Brunswick East is a breezy, lazy, jazzy stroll through a cartoon version of the 60's. The white-hot distortion of the guitars is traded in for a clean, bright tone. The arena-sized, doomsaying organs are swapped with sunny, meandering jazz keys. And even frontman Stu trades his woops and hollers and ominous lyrics for a more breathy, sing-songy approach. In fact, it's such a 180 from those previous albums that I think a lot of new listeners unversed in King Gizzard's past genre-switching acrobatics might not ever guess they're the same band.

And to be fair, they're kinda not the same band this time around, since Sketches is a collaborative project with fellow Aussie musician Alexander Brettin, the sole member of Mild High Club (I guess no one else wanted to join). According to the band, Sketches was born when Alex once crashed at Stu Mackenzie's place for a few weeks late last year and started hashing out some song ideas. They picked it back up later by sending each other more snippets or sketches of songs (get it??) via iPhone and which were later fleshed out into this album.

This organic, loose creative process definitely shows on Sketches of Brunswick East, in that the whole record flows together like one big jam session (slash) dream sequence, which often works very well, but at times doesn't. For instance, the opening track "Sketches of Brunswick East I" is a jammy little theme song for the record. It's enjoyable enough the first time, but then it's more or less copy and pasted to make the later tracks, "Sketches of Brunswick East II" and "III." And generally speaking, the instrumental tracks--the places where the album feels very improvised--are weaker than the tracks with vocals, with the main exception being "Cranes, Planes, and Migraines" which features this really tight, funky rhythm section that makes the song very memorable.

But really, that's my only big gripe: the instrumentals can be a little meandering and in one ear and out the other. Besides that, I think the rest of the album sounds fantastic! Opener "Countdown" shows the band jelling together on a difficult 9/4 in duple meter beat, and features a very tasty, certified-jazz E-piano solo on the bridge, which I'm pretty sure is performed by Mild High Club? (If anyone happens to know if it isn't him, leave a comment! I want to know for sure, because that solo is impressive!) 

Many of the tracks on Sketches give some limelight to other members of the band besides normal frontman Stu, which gives the album a unique freshness: "Tezeta" is a fun, catchy, exotica shuffle, with lead vocals from Gizzard guitarist Joey Walker. "The Spider and Me" features Gizzard multi-instrumentalist (and my homie) Ambrose Kenny-Smith on vocals, who spins gold with his delicate, boyish performance. 

Da band: From L to R: Joey Walker, Stu Mackenzie, Eric Moore, Ambrose Kenny-Smith!, Lucas Skinner, Cook Craig, and Michael Cavanagh
Photo credit: https://www.relix.com/blogs/detail/king_gizzard_and_the_
lizard_wizard_play_whats_in_my_bag_at_amoeba_records

And then there's my personal favorite track, "The Book," a standout on the album not only because of how immediate and well-written it is, but because of how, just, dark it is compared to anything else on the record. In his best, deep-voiced Mike Patton impression, guitarist Cook Craig tells the tale of a schizophrenic man who thinks God is telling him to kill all the sinners in the world, and eventually himself. Tthe man regards these messages as his own kind of pageless Bible, or "The Book".... Yeah, dark stuff no matter what album it's on, but especially on this otherwise lackadaisical, dreamy project. But it's a really good different that makes the song stick with you. And again, it has a really strong, Disco Volante- or California-era Mr. Bungle vibe that I really dig.

All in all, to wrap up this rather long review, I am really loving Sketches of East Brunswick. It definitely has its flaws, and at rare points, the kind of meandering, piecemeal creative process that birthed it shows awkwardly. But, outweighing this are the great musical ideas that King Gizzard and Mild High Club cooked up and served together. If you haven't been huge on King Gizzard's past lo-fi, dense rock 'n roll, and especially if you weren't keen on the last album, Murder of the Universe, definitely give this a shot. I know personally I'll be spinning this album a lot, alongside the other great albums of 2017 and in King Gizzard's discog. I'm excited to see what they put out next!

OVERALL SCORE: 7.9
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Sketches of Brunswick East
1. Sketches of Brunswick East I 2. Countdown 3. D-Day 4. Tezeta 5. Cranes, Planes, and Migraines 6. Sketches of Brunswick East II 7. Dust to Dawn on Lygon Street 8. The Book 9. A Journey to (S)hell 10. Rolling Stoned 11. You Can Be Your Silhouette 12. Sketches of Brunswick East III	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.

Life Update 8/21/2017

Hello, hello! I am not dead and, more importantly, am back into blogging! I would say it's been a crazy, busy year and a half since last I wrote, and while it definitely has been, crazy and busy just seem like the new norm--dealing off and on with my mental health, changing jobs within my company, getting back into school, and especially since now my wife and I are expecting! 

Yep, little Baby Spendlove is due in March 2018, and we are just ecstatic. I mean, just look at the little guy! (I'm convinced it's a boy. My apologies, baby, if you are a girl and I'm calling you the wrong thing.) We have been waiting a long time to be able to have a baby, and this little cutie just fell in our laps out of nowhere, virtually on the eve of Rachel having surgery to be able to get pregnant! Hashtag surgery averted. 

Our little tyke!!

I suppose us having a baby and preparing for his/her arrival is helping me straighten up my schedule and prioritize my time, so that I make sure I'm getting the important things done each day. And in that straightening up of my schedule, I'm finding myself with free time and the desire to write again. I've been writing in a physical journal for the past week or so, and that's been helping get all the thoughts in my head out as well as, I think, helping me get bit by the writing bug again. So, a week ago or so, I went back and read all my posts on this blog and I realized just how fun it was and how much I missed it. And I wasn't as scatter-brained a writer as I remember being, honestly!

So, here we are! I'm starting up album reviews again with the new King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album that dropped just last week--Sketches of Brunswick East--which I find rather fitting because my last album review before my sabbatical was for their 2016 release Nonagon Infinity, and that album was my gateway drug into the rest of their prodigious discog. Anyway, expect that review to be coming soon, and for many more to follow!

Thanks, those of you who are still here and still interested, for taking the time to read and to share your passion for music with mine. Music is one of the things that makes my blood pump in my veins, that gets me out of bed in the morning, and that simply makes me happy. I'm excited to start writing and discussing it again and to contribute in some way, hopefully, to turning you guys on to good, new releases as they come out. Stay tuned!

Skott - "Wolf": TRACK REVIEW

Photo credit: http://genius.com/Skott-wolf-lyrics

Recently, as I was spelunking the new releases on Spotify, I stumbled on a little British gem. Her name is Skott, and besides the fact that she's British and that, according to her record label, she grew up in a commune of social outcast musicians in the woods, that's all that anyone seems to know about Skott at this point. 

But this sense of mystique generated by her anonymity is part of the appeal of her debut double A-side single, "Porcelain / Wolf." Like a wisp in the woods, I don't know where she came from, what she is, or where she's going, but what she's doing is beautiful. 

Of the two singles, "Wolf" in my opinion is the stand out track. We're greeted by a delicate piano chords and an undulating, subtle rhythm which are brought to life by Skott's stunning vocals. She smoothly glides up and down pentatonic scales as she sings in the chorus, "I'm a wolf, howling in the moonlight, calling out like a fool," exhibiting her delicate head voice.  On the verses, we're treated by her rich and arresting lower register as she bemoans the changes and uncertainty wrought by a love gone awry. She wonders aloud, "What is eternal about love? Is there a way to turn it off?"

The woman, the myth, the Jedi: Skott
Photo credit: http://pigeonsandplanes.com/music/2016/06/skott-porcelain-premiere

She certainly wears her influences on her sleeve--electro-pop indie heroines like Bjork, St. Vincent, and the Knife/Fever Ray instantly come to mine. At points, Skott teeters on the edge of imitation, like the melody she sings on the verse that sounds straight out of Annie Clark's playbook. But the songwriting, her stellar voice, and the sonic choices she makes--dance beat + strings + electronic mysticism--give the track a unique enough sound to feel like a fresh and welcome contribution to the oft-times stagnant and overcrowded genre of indie synth pop. 

Give the track a spin, tell me what you think, and tell me your favorite track that you've stumbled upon recently!

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity: ALBUM REVIEW

Listen here.

The only thing more fun than saying "King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard" is playing Nonagon Infinity on repeat. The album title for King Gizzard's eighth studio album is quite literal: Nonagon Infinity is a 9-track album that flows seamlessly from one track into the other, and loops perfectly from the final track back to the opening track.  

I feel like a lot of bands have thought about making an infinitely looping album like Nonagon Infinity--not the least of which is Pink Floyd with the mind-melting transitions on Dark Side of the Moon--but apparently Australia's King Gizzard is the first band to have balls to go through with it. And, man, do they do it well.  

The album kicks off with the barn-burner "Robot Stop," beginning with an ominous invocation/prelude, "Wait for the answers to open the door/Nonagon infinity opens the door," before all 7 members of the band jump on their instruments, slamming out riffs, cutting off eighth notes from their bars, and wooping and wailing like Indian braves playing garage punk.  

For the next 40 minutes the band mines every nook and cranny of this sound.  Like the album cover shows, not only does track 1 connect to track 2, etc., but track 1 connects to tracks 8, 9, 3... The most obvious connection is the "nonagon infinity" chant, which pops up as the album's running mantra on "Robot Stop," "Big Fig Wasp," "Evil Death Roll," and closer "Road Train."  Similarly, lyrics from track 7, "Invisible Face," first pop up on the prior track, "Evil Death Roll." And "Big Fig Wasp" is built on a riff that grows out of the middle of "Robot Stop." All in all, this makes the album feel like one hulking, twisting, connected, breathing organic life form. ...in the best way possible.  Sometimes, yes, this mining of the same sound for 9 straight tracks drags, like on "Wah Wah" and "Gamma Knife," which I don't feel bring anything new to the table. But these moments are more than redeemed by other genius moments of songwriting like the entirety of "Mr. Beat."

Photo credit: http://www.relix.com/articles/detail/spotlight_king_gizzard_the_lizard_wizard

A little note on the album's production: The first time you put on the album, if you're like me, you'll be checking the EQ on your stereo, making sure the treble and mid didn't somehow get turned down to levels of murky muddiness.  It's not your stereo.  It's the lower-than-lo-fi production, making the album feel 40 years older than it is.  In fact, legend has it that vocalist Stu Mackenzie actually uses a microphone that is literally from the 70s.  I wouldn't doubt that for a second.  Once your 21st century ears get adjusted to the incredible fuzz and murk, you'll find that Nonagon Infinity's quirky sound often achieves a level of visceral energy that other modern band's slick and sexy production misses.

Through the band's short but ridiculously prolific career so far, with only 6 years and a whopping 8 albums under their belt, have shown that they certainly aren't afraid to try out what others won't.  I mean, again.  They're called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. 

They've made love songs to their homeland's beloved Vegemite, traded their fuzzed out garage rock for something closer to indie folk, and now they've made literally the album version of a geometric figure. I'm just excited to see what these guys try next.

OVERALL SCORE: 8.6
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity
1. Robot Stop 2. Big Fig Wasp 3. Gamma Knife 4. People-Vultures 5. Mr. Beat 6. Evil Death Roll 7. Invisible Face 8. Wah Wah 9. Road Train	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.