It may be surprising, but “Honey” is one of the most documented King Gizzard songs so far. Not only are there multiple demos out there, but Stu himself has extensively elaborated on the song’s recording as part of KEXP’s Isolated Tracks series. This is partially due to the COVID-19 lockdown, which no doubt influenced the recording and lyricism of both K.G. and L.W. and prevented the band from touring. Stuck with nowhere to go, the band wrote about it, released that material, put out the first demo and got candid about how it was put together. In fact “Honey” is a song about COVID, at least in some regard. In a broken, chaotic world there’s a happy, loving and unwavering relationship which is the focal point of the track. Even in the darkness of a pandemic and environmental destruction, there’s still joy. Coming off of the brutal and environmentally conscious Flying Microtonal Banana as the first part of their microtonal output, it may be easy to expect some nihilism but “Honey” showed that K.G. would symbolize a wider scope.
The song originated from “Sleep Drifter” jams as far back as 2018. The song’s main riff can be heard during the intro of 2018-06-20 at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. Stu remarked in the Isolated Tracks episode, “You just get these moments where you look at each other and it’s just like ‘oh woah, that five seconds there is an entire song.’” The first demo (released on Demos Vol. 2: Music To Eat Bananas To) is an instrumental full-band jam. Missing are the acoustics that define the final version and the drum beat going into the verse which is replaced by a more staggered approach. Other than that, “Honey (Demo 1)” is pretty close to the finalized version. A second demo (found on Demos Vol. 5: Music To Think Existentially To) is a bit rougher sounding with more distortion on the guitars but stands very close to the first demo. According to Joey it originated as a band demo but due to the pandemic became something else, losing the in person feel. “Written by Stu, ‘Honey’ is one of the first songs we had for this record. Early iterations of the track were much more band oriented and meandering. But alas, the dreaded pandemic kept us confined to our respective dwellings and those versions didn’t make it past the demo stage. It is a true artifact of trying to make a record in lockdown and having to find ways around not being able to play in the same room together.”
When it comes to the actual studio version there’s a few interesting notes. There are two drum parts on the track panned to left and right. They were recorded with an overhead and kick drum mic, bounced through a Tascam tape machine and sound, to quote Stu “really, really bad.” To make up for this, he added multiple percussion samples to make the beat stand out more. The main acoustic guitar was recorded onto an iPhone by Stu which allows the part to cut through the mix (though this is not the first time the band has done this — “12 Bar Bruise” utilized it back in 2012). There are two bass parts with one carrying the main song and the other (most likely recorded on another bass) kicking in at 3:24. The vocals were recorded through an AKG DGN99 E mic and are heavily compressed. Some of the harmony vocals are copied from the foundation and pitched up. Outside of the base track the song features pitched Mellotron, organ and harmonica (which was largely cut). More technical info (EQ, bus, mastering) can be found on the third episode of KEXP’s Isolated Tracks. Stu said that for Gizzard the song was “restrained” when it came to recording, with far less to juggle than other songs.
According to Stu, the lyrics saw multiple revisions before making it to the record. “It took a long time for this song to develop and it went through a lot of versions of the words and the final version of the lyrics were definitely kind of changed and written to reflect my state of mind this year, even though a lot of the music was put together earlier. I think It started off as much more of an effervescent happy, just earnest song, and then it kind of got a bit more dark but maybe deeply more sincere as well. I’m not sure.”
The final version of the song was recorded by Ambrose (harmonica), Cavs (drums/percussion), Cook (piano), Joey (bass) and Stu (guitar/vocals/percussion/keyboards/bass/clarinet/organ), with Lucas nowhere to be found.
First teased on July 13th, 2020 a music video directed by John Angus Stewart was released a day later which features Stu playing a modified Morris acoustic guitar in an industrial zone at sunset. In the very first Gizzymail, Stu said “Honey was pretty funny to make. John stood really far away from me with a paparazzi style zoom lens. I had a UE Boom in my back pocket. The cops rocked up, but they were actually real nice. Maybe cos we’re two white men. Hmmm ACAB.” When the video dropped Stu wrote this statement: “I wrote this song a couple of years ago. It’s nice to have it out in the world.” “Honey” would be the first taste of K.G. and the first single for the album, which was released on November 20th, 2020. “Honey” would be the second-to-last song on the album.
The song was first played on 2021-02-23 at the Croxton Park Hotel in Naarm (Melbourne) as part of the fully microtonal sets the band did that year. Its debut was at the band’s first show since the COVID-19 lockdown and appeared coming out of its origin point, “Sleep Drifter,” towards the end of the set. A day later on 2021-02-24, however, the song would be shown to be more versatile as it would appear near the beginning of the set and lead into “Minimum Brain Size.” On 2021-03-31 at the Thebarton Theatre in Adelaide, “Honey” was played as a standalone track with the next day (2021-04-01) having it come out of “Nuclear Fusion.” The song is a wild card throughout 2021, appearing wherever the band sees an opening, but was never one to reach longer than six minutes. In 2022 the song began to find a groove, appearing as a standalone track or next to “Sleep Drifter,” and would take a back seat as the band reintroduced their non-microtonal output. There would be some oddities such as “Automation” > “Honey,” as heard at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on 2022-10-10, but it seemed that the song was finding a suitable place. The notable thing about 2022 versions, however, is that the song began to expand into more jammy territories, with some versions reaching nearly ten minutes in length, a feature that would remain going forward. Going into 2023 the song was played a fair amount with some notably unique transitions.