During a break between legs of their World Tour 2024 on 29 October 2024, KGLW would release a single titled "Phantom Island" as part of a then unnamed 27th album which they would be performing live alongside various orchestras during an upcoming tour in 2025.[2][3][4]Stu Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith explained that the album was developed alongside Flight b741 but that Flight b741 contained the more "rowdy" songs while the new album will be "more laidback."[2][5] Stu Mackenzie stated that they were inspired to do an orchestral album after performing at the Hollywood Bowl in 2023 on the band's U.S. Residency Tour where they met with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra backstage.[6][7]
Mackenzie also stated:
"The songs felt like they needed this other energy and colour, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas. We didn’t know we were going to have an orchestra dubbed on top when we were recording. If we had, that would have really changed the songs. But we went into it very free and easy. The songs were written in a very 'improv' way, stitched together from multiple takes or longer jams… It feels like you’re in the room with the band and the orchestra, that we’re all in the same room together.[8]
On 9 April 2025, the band announced the album's title as Phantom Island along with its tracklist. On 15 April, alongside pre-orders going live, a second single "Deadstick" was released with a music video.[9][10][11][12][13][14] Additionally the band announced that the album would be released on 13 June as well as more information as to why English composer Chad Kelly was brought onto the project, with Mackenzie saying:[14]
He brings this wealth of musical awareness to his chameleon-like arrangements. We come from such different worlds — he plays Mozart and Bach and uses the same harpsichords they did, and tunes them the exact same way. But he’s obsessed with microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me.[14]
On 13 May the band released the third single from the album "Grow Wings and Fly" alongside its music video.[15] On 3 June the band released the Making of Phantom Island behind the scenes documentary on the album [16] with the album itself released on 13 June.
On June 10 Exclaim! published their review of the album before it dropped, calling it "their most vulnerable, intimate record" and thematically "oddly akin to '60s trucker country." They described Phantom Island as "'70s soft rock", "Sea of Doubt" as Southern rock, "Silent Spirit" as a jazzy crooner, and "Deadstick" as "freaky, bluesy." Overall Exclaim! called 'Phantom Island' a "timely pause in an otherwise full-throttle discography."[18]
Live performances
The track "Grow Wings and Fly" was played twice during their 2024 World Tour before the song had been confirmed as part of the album, once on 15 November at the Germania Insurance Amphitheater in Austin, Texas, and a second time on 17 November at the Mardi Gras World in New Orleans. Both times it was played following "Shanghai" from Butterfly 3000,[19][20] where it spawned from jams as far back as 2023.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard announced a 2025 tour where they will travel the United States playing the album with a different orchestra in each city, alongside a more standard Rock'N'Roll show at Forest Hills Stadium with the tour to be capped off by a camping residency dubbed Field of Vision in Buena Vista, Colorado.[21][11][22][23]
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