93. King Gizzard

Scala

9 July 2015

I arrived fashionably late to the King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard party, which, in fairness, is how most people seem to arrive at their gigs. By the time I tuned in, they’d already amassed a cult-like following back in Australia and had started exporting the madness globally. It was 2015, and the southern hemisphere was having something of a moment: Courtney Barnett was leading a charge through the indie confessional singer songwriter community, Tame Impala were turning navel-gazing into chart gold, and The Jezabels, Gang of Youths and The Temper Trap were all adding to the gold-and-green hued indie renaissance. Into this came the Lizards, riding a wave of hallucinogenic fuzz and possibly something stronger.

At first glance, the band look like they’ve wandered in from West Coast hippie cult, but don’t let the stoner chic fool you, these people work. Hard. We’re talking beaver-with-a-deadline levels of productivity. By the time you read this, they’ll probably have released another twelve albums and invented a new genre involving microtonal kazoos and electric didgeridoos.

Live, it’s a glorious mess. A wall of sound so dense it could probably be mined for minerals. Two drummers pound out trance-inducing tribal grooves, while guitars wail, squawk and melt into each other. At one point, a flutist wandered onstage, summoned like a Dungeons & Dragons side quest, and proceeded to fire off a burst of baroque prog before disappearing again into the haze.

Every time you think you’ve got a handle on what they’re doing, they spin the wheel again and take off in a new direction. Is it chaotic? Yes. Is it occasionally baffling? Certainly. But is it boring? Not for a single second. This is music for the polymaths, the misfits, and the people still clinging to the belief that genres are a polite suggestion, not a rule. It's weird, wild and, most importantly, really interesting.