King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: 12 Bar Bruise [ATO]

Why you'll love it

This reissue comes with new artwork reimagined by Jason Galea and an inner sleeve with fresh notes from Stu Mackenzie. It's where the band's absurdly prolific story begins, with "Bloody Ripper" and "Elbow" as the first singles.

This edition

• New artwork by Jason Galea
• Inner sleeve with new notes from Stu Mackenzie
• Stereo mix

About the album

These days King Gizzard put out albums the way other bands put out tweets, so it's worth remembering they had to start somewhere. That somewhere was 12 Bar Bruise, recorded and mixed by the band themselves in Melbourne in 2012 and put out on their own Flightless label.

It's short, loud and sweaty: twelve songs in about 34 minutes, packed with surf, garage and psych. "Elbow" and "Muckraker" kick the door in, "Bloody Ripper" gallops, and "Sam Cherry's Last Shot" borrows spoken word from an 1883 novel. "Cut Throat Boogie" and "Footy Footy" are band-written romps, and "Uh, Oh, I Called Mum" is as cheerfully chaotic as its title. The title track was cut late at night in Anglesea with four iPhones around the room and Stu Mackenzie singing straight into one of them.

When it came back on vinyl in 2018 it climbed to No. 14 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Four iPhones and a holiday house, and it still sounds bigger than most studio records; we've stopped asking how.

Also at Kops: more King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Flightless / ATO (cat# FLT-001R), a reissue of the 2012 album.