They did it! Melbourne psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard really wrote, recorded and released five (amazing) albums in one year!

February’s Flying Microtonal Banana, June’s Murder of the Universe, August’s Sketches of Brunswick East and November’s Polygondwanaland make up the first four typically Gizzard concept-style albums, but what happened to the songs that didn’t quite fit? That didn’t sit within the boundaries of any of these albums? They were thrown into the Soup.

Even though Gumboot Soup is their fifth album this year, it feels very complete, though more diverse. There are no moments where it feels as though they are stretching their material thin. A lot of this album sits at the more chilled out end of King Gizzard’s spectrum, close to the Mild High Club collaboration earlier this year, with some Paper Machè Dream Balloon sounds from 2015 thrown in. Then songs like ‘The Great Chain of Being’ and ‘All is Known’ draw on their darker, heavier side.

“The fifth record is this place for us to put a lot of different ideas that we’re trying to experiment within the song, rather than within the whole record,” frontman Stu Mackenzie recently stated. “It’s more song-oriented than album-oriented.”

Although Gumboot Soup lacks the cohesiveness of previous albums such as Murder of the Universe and Nonagon Infinity, the focus on each song individually rather than the sound of the album as the whole makes the album far more approachable and therefore may bring a well-deserved larger audience to the hardworking band.