King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard ‘Fly’ High On New Single

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard soar heavenward with the smily, major-key jam “Grow Wings and Fly,” which is the final track on and the third pre-release single from the Australian group’s 27th album, Phantom Island. The 10-track set is due June 13 from (p)doom records.

Filmed at Melbourne’s Flinders Beach, the Hayden Somerville-directed video clip for “Grow Wings and Fly” stars group member Ambrose Kenny-Smith as a washed ashore aquatic being who is lovingly returned to the water by fellow Gizzards Joey Walker, Cook “Cookie” Craig, Michael “Cavs” Cavanagh and Lucas Hardwood. Later, he appears in human form as a fisherman thinking back to prior expeditions with group member Stu Mackenzie, who is now seemingly a ghost.

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“There are so many strange and beautiful ways to grow wings and fly,” Somerville says. “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.”

“Grow Wings and Fly” will be familiar to sharp-eared Gizzard fans as a fragment initially tacked onto the song “Shanghai” in live performances. It evolved into its own distinct song last year and was played in its more complete form on at least two occasions during the band’s fall 2024 tour. The studio version features pedal steel guitar contributions from Gizzard’s recording and front of house engineer Sam Joseph atop aspirational lyrics about the power of transcendence: “you gotta stop the overwhelming self-doubt / catch me dancing in the summer rain with my tongue out.”

The 10 cuts on Phantom Island, which are a companion of sorts to those on the 2024 album Flight b741, find King Gizzard enveloped in elaborate string arrangements and heavy orchestration — a first for the group. “The songs felt like they needed this other energy and color, [and] that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” says Mackenzie, who enlisted British conductor/arranger/keyboardist Chad Kelly to help flesh out the sound. “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.”

Beginning Sunday (May 18) in Lisbon, Gizzard will play multi-show residencies in such off-the-beaten-path European venues as a former prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, and a 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater in Plovdiv, and in late July, the band will be back in the U.S. for their first-ever shows backed by local symphonies. Perhaps best of all: Gizzard will debut their own festival, Field of Vision, from Aug. 15-17 in the beautiful outdoor setting of Buena Vista, Co., where they will play three distinct sets amid a lineup of friends such as Babe Rainbow, King Stingray and DJ Crenshaw.

The band will then visit Europe again beginning Oct. 31 in Manchester, England, for shows divided between synth-powered “rave sets” and local symphony-backed spotlights on Phantom Island.

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