“Involve your friends in your art” is a striking statement I recently stumbled across—working with like-minded people is a reliable way to produce a labour of love and revel in fun. That’s exactly what Australian psychedelic rock pioneers Jay Watson (Pond and Tame Impala’s touring band) and Ambrose Kenny-Smith (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and The Murlocs) got up to when concocting their collaborative album, Ill Times.

Usually working as a crucial cog for the neo-psych groups he’s a member of, Watson’s skills as a multi-instrumentalist are fed into his output as GUM, the alias he’s currently produced six full-length albums under. A marked addition, Ill Times had its genesis in Watson’s difficulty to write lyrics—a problem he finds to be a persistent burden. The earliest instrumental he carved for the record showed too much swagger and attitude for GUM and was even too sweet-sounding for Pond’s conscious musical sensibility. How, then, was Watson able to accommodate his boisterous and lavish experiments? By phoning a friend, of course.

Said friend was Kenny-Smith, best known as the harmonica-player, keyboardist and vocalist for the unbelievably prolific rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. The two have been mates since their late teens after a Tame Impala gig at the Eureka Hotel, where they met at the bar. Plenty of drunken fun ensued, but more importantly, their shared musical seeds were planted and sprouted once Kenny-Smith’s band made waves. Watson says, “It’s always pretty easy to become mates with people whose music you like.” It was only natural that they’d eventually come together to conjoin their passionate brains into an all-encompassing LP echoing their own bands’ musical prowess. Kenny-Smith initially got on board by texting Watson, suggesting his vocals would fit the first instrumental he had trouble with (finished as ‘Old Transistor Radio’) and after many remote back and forths during their downtime, Ill Times was born.

The resultant record features gargantuan funky and bluesy melodies that are deceivingly optimistic—Ill Times would be an inappropriate title if it weren’t for Kenny-Smith’s solemn and thoughtful lyrics. The opener ‘Dud’ was written with his dad, multi-instrumentalist Broderick Smith, who tragically passed before the album’s completion. But Kenny-Smith cites it as the song he’s proudest of: “I’m super grateful Jay was able to bring it to life.” Over Watson’s glowy production, Kenny-Smith sings soulfully and gratuitously: “All this tragedy yeh we don’t have regrets … Father, Father bid you adieu”. It’s his most vulnerable and profound and he says those feelings only appear “when you make your best shit.”

The title track ‘Ill Times’ extends the themes of devastation by touching on the rebuilding of oneself after drastic life events: “Quitters never win and winners never quit, spit the dummy flip the script”. However, this morbidity is flipped with the album’s later cuts. They’re like getting back on your feet again—‘Minor Setback’ is driven by a rocking bassline and its title, repeated throughout the track, is a call to that notion. ‘Old Transistor Radio’ features a bombastic electric guitar groove that is simply glamorous, ‘Emu Rock’ more so with its boogie rock breakdown. ‘Marionette’ is a purposeful near-power ballad, chirping with keys and dense words about being strangled by remorse for wrongdoings towards others: “Things you’ve said don’t you wish you could take ‘em back but that ain’t quite in your vocab / The general consensus is some people don’t forgive and forget”.

This latest chapter in the GUM catalogue is truly one made with love. You can tell Watson and Kenny-Smith gave it their all because of how full it sounds. Kenny-Smith was the missing piece to give Watson’s latest venture the zeal and fervour it needed—its rapturous identity is Watson wholeheartedly seizing that opportunity. Well, here’s the outcome: Watson’s musical intellect is decorated with Kenny-Smith’s compassion and those two mates are celebrating their friendship.

Ill Times is available to listen now on all major music platforms.