Opting in to attend a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard show is something else – the band has gone out of their way to defy convention, performing different setlists each night of their tours, rendering them an entirely unpredictable beast. They arrive to Boston under cloudy skies, preceded by America’s own brand of weird rockers from New York, Geese. The Australian band are touring on the heels of their latest record, Flight b741, which marks their twenty-sixth LP. They have always worked at a creative pace that dares to challenge, or perhaps exceed, that of veterans like Guided By Voices, flexing a bit in 2017 by putting out five albums in the year. Just glancing through the crowd at a show is akin to striding through a museum of King Gizzard album cycles.
Their discography encompasses a truly stunning, perhaps even daunting range of musical styles – they began as hyper-technical garage and psych rock (think Osees for a touchstone), but have deliberately thrown themselves over proverbial waterfalls to launch headlong into new environs. Their psych era crested in 2017 with Polygondwanaland, boasting songs like the fantastic ‘Crumbling Castle’; 2019’s Infest the Rat’s Nest began an era defined by forays into metal; Flight b741 is a decidedly bluesy affair. Suffice to say, there is absolutely no nailing this band down.
A reasonable person might wonder if such hairpin turns of genre – sometimes within the same record – could be executed successfully, but the band are technically masterful, both in terms of individual skill and the amount of tools they employ. The sheer amount of instrumental devices they bring to their live show is staggering – one can only imagine the litany of tech that takes up residence wherever they might happen to record an album. Speaking of, the first thing that happens at Suffolk Downs is a team of crew members hauling a massive table to the center of the stage, with multiple microphone arms mounted to its sides. A camera mounted on one such boom projects a feed to the big screen at the back of the stage, color channels bent wildly to produce an overview of the tabletop in blown-out red, blue, and green. Some sort of board ever-so-slightly overshoots the edge of the table, its surface covered in the classic intriguing mess of multicolored patch cords. Around the table are Stu Mackenzie, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Joey Walker, Cook Craig, and Lucas Harwood – all multi-instrumentalists, all vocalists of some stripe – though Mackenzie, Walker, and Kenny-Smith are the most common in the lead vocal role.
The arrival of the synthesizer palanquin heralds the opening of the show, which finds all but drummer Michael Cavanagh standing around the table, conducting what can only be described as a synth seance. This opening performance lasts more than thirty minutes, the first of many movements in the night that give the impression that the members of the band are deeply, clinically averse to stopping the music for even a moment. This odyssey covers no less than three songs drawn from 2022’s Changes and 2023’s The Silver Cord, merged seamlessly into a cohesive whole. The latter album features an “Extended Mix” of ‘Extinction’ – I imagine this qualifies as the extended-Extended Mix. One of the most impressive aspects of King Gizzard is how the band members are all ready, seemingly at the drop of a hat, to perform any piece of their music, be it in their more typical guitar-focused configuration, or stationed around various electronic paraphernalia. It tracks – the resumes of basically all members of the band are to Australian music what those of Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug or Dan Boeckner are to indie rock in terms of the cross-pollination they’ve achieved over the years.
When the band finally splits off to their respective positions and the table is heaved off-stage, they move into ‘The Grim Reaper’ from Omnium Gatherum. People start tumbling over each other’s shoulders out in the crowd, rolling into the waiting arms of staff in the wide berth between the stage and the crowd barricade. But the action pauses for a moment as the most touching moment of the evening arrives. Many people have brought signs of some description, but the biggest is held by someone named Timmy, whose gigantic message tells a somber tale. His friend Joey, a pilot and ardent fan of the band who almost certainly would have been at this very show, passed away in February of this year. The sign asks the band if they might play Joey’s favorite song, ‘Perihelion’, and if Timmy could join them onstage. In a display of true good-natured rockstar grace, they haul him up and Walker offers Timmy his guitar. I’m no musician, but by all indications it seems to go stunningly well, Timmy shredding in his late friend’s favorite shirt. Walker sings with him into their now-shared microphone, and Mackenzie gives him a big hug at the end of it all.
As if on cue after this display of tenderness, the moment ‘Perihelion’ concludes not only does the band’s sound escalate in general, but the finicky New England weather attempts to match it. It’s not immediately apparent – at first, I attribute the click-click of huge raindrops against my jacket to an increase in volume shaking droplets loose from the roof of the stage high above. But no – rain falls in the most intense sheets it has all evening, pelting the coats and rain ponchos of those who had the wherewithal to check the forecast. And yet, the crowd-surfers soaring towards the pit do so giddily, soaked through as they are.
Gizz set aside a block of songs to explore the new stuff of Flight b741, including the live debut of its title track, fittingly bluesy and, according to Mackenzie, chiefly penned by bassist Lucas Skinner. Speaking to Brooklyn Vegan, Mackenzie declares the new one their “most collaborative record”. This ends up being the most directed section of the night, and as soon as it came, the band is back onto a more freeform vibe, occupying the remainder of their 140-plus-minute set with a pair of tracks from Nonagon Infinity as well as ‘Hypertension’ and ‘Float Along – Fill Your Lungs’.
The stage lights beaming out into the sky must make an interesting spectacle for the passengers on the starboard side of the planes coming in to land at Logan Airport, their telltale green lights sailing over the horizon often, though their sounds are powerless to challenge King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. ‘Hypertension’ recalls King Gizz’s countrymen The Chats’ ‘Temperature’, in how the Australian intonation of syllables gives the lyrics a unique cadence to the American ear. They groove on the repetitive hook of the song, elevating things slightly every time, until arriving at a conclusion that seems like it will never come, even as it threatens to whip around every corner. By the time the final notes of ‘Float Along – Fill Your Lungs’ ring out, the crowd is almost universally drenched – in sweat, if not in rain. But a cohort at the front is still calling for another song, noise curfews of East Boston be damned. It’s not a request that can be granted, but on the slow walk out of the venue, the joyous exhaustion sets in. The band gave the audience a marathon set, entirely unique to this place and this day – something genuinely irreplaceable.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
