There aren’t many genres with which King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have yet to experiment, but “orchestral rock” can now be checked off the list with the arrival of a new single, “Phantom Island,” and the partial announcement of a 2025 North American tour backed by local symphonies.
“Phantom Island” was recorded during the same sessions that produced this year’s Flight b741, which was King Gizzard’s 26th studio album. It’s also a taste of the follow-up to it, which the Australian sextet has been working on in their home studio in recent weeks. The multi-faceted “Phantom Island” is unlike anything the band have released previously, as it heavily features strings and horns played by guest musicians whose names have yet to be detailed. The extra instrumentation appears to have been recorded at Allan Eaton Studios in St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia.
“It’s definitely very far from being finished, so it’s still evolving,” group member Stu Mackenzie told SPIN this summer of the next project. “It is related to b741, maybe in some ways more explicitly than [the twin 2023 albums] Petro and Silver Cord were, and in some ways more abstract. It’s probably slightly more of a chill one, but it’s also massive in scope.”
“We chose the more rowdy, rambunctious songs that felt like they needed to all be together,” group member Ambrose Kenny-Smith explains to SPIN of how the Flight b741 material was divided. “This way, it would sound like more of a party — more loose, more dad rock, more garage, more upbeat. The others seemed to be a bit more spacious, more strung out, maybe even a bit more singer/songwriter-y. They have more sparseness to them. They’re more laidback. We decided to split them up, and that’s what the 27th album is turning into.”
As for next year’s tour, Gizzard will play just seven dates with the orchestras, which will be conducted by music director Sarah Hicks, and a solitary “rock show” at the second of two nights in Forest Hills, N.Y. That run will culminate with the band’s first destination camping festival, Field of Vision, from Aug. 15-17 at Meadow Creek in Buena Vista, Co. Gizzard’s members toured the grounds this summer while in the area to perform at Red Rocks outside Denver and named the event after a song from Flight b741.
At Field of Vision, fans are welcome to “connect with nature’s finest mountain views, inhale the crisp Colorado fresh air, play in rivers and creeks and channel freedom through music, dance and community,” per the band. “This iconic Colorado site hosts Mount Princeton as its backdrop, a gorgeous creek lined with 100-foot tall cottonwood trees running through its center and a beach surrounding a swimming pond, with 360 degree views of stunning surrounding scenery.”
Tickets go on sale Friday (Nov. 1) except for the Chicago show, which will be available in March. Before the 2025 North American orchestral tour, Gizzard will play three-night runs at a series of majestic European venues, beginning May 18 in Lisbon and concluding June 10 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
The group will begin a fresh round of North American shows Friday at the 17,500-capacity Kia Forum in Los Angeles, which will be their first proper U.S. arena concert 10 years to the day since they played in front of a couple hundred people at SUNY Binghamton in upstate New York. The 40-date tour will have shifted 240,000 tickets before it wraps Nov. 21 in Miami.
Here are King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s 2025 tour dates:
May 18-20: Lisbon (Coliseu do Recreios)
May 23-25: Barcelona (Poble Espanyol)
May 29-31: Vilnius, Lithuania (Lukiškės Prison 2.0)
June 4-6: Athens (Lycabettus Theatre City of Athens)
June 8-10: Plovdiv, Bulgaria (Ancient Theatre)
July 28: Philadelphia (TD Pavilion at the Mann w/ The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia)
July 30: New Haven, Ct. (Westville Music Bowl w/ Orchestra of St. Luke’s)
Aug. 1: New York (Forest Hills Stadium w/ Orchestra of St. Luke’s)
Aug. 2: New York (Forest Hills Stadium / rock show)
Aug. 4: Columbia, Md. (Merriweather Post Pavilion w/ National Symphony Orchestra)
Aug. 6: Highland Park, Il. (Ravinia Festival w/ Chicago Philharmonic)
Aug. 8: Colorado Springs, Co. (Ford Amphitheater w/ Colorado Symphony)
Aug. 11: San Diego (Rady Shell at Jacobs Park w/ San Diego Symphony Orchestra)
Aug. 15-17: Buena Vista, Co. (Field of Vision at Meadow Creek)
