King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Don't Do Encores and We Are Not Worthy
Maybe there’s something in the water or just maybe Australia is secretly one big talented musician factory disguising itself as a country, but we have AC/DC, Tame Impala, Courtney Barnett, The Avalanches, Nick Cave, Wolfmother, and so many more to thank the down-under for. Aside from our cringeworthy, annoying, and slightly offensive Australian accents (I am so sorry), us Americans really do love Australia and appreciate all of the great music native to the fantastic country. And now, many more Americans find themselves thanking Australia once again for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard!
Southern Californians are STILL swooning and reminiscing over the stellar performances King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard gave us in Orange County and Hollywood: both packed with die-hard gizzard heads. The OC Observatory set felt tight-knit and intimate, everyone in the venue had a great view of their brilliance. The biggest turnout was at their sold-out Hollywood Palladium show with about 3,700 stoked fans who lost their minds, not only in the pit but also up in the balconies! It was a madhouse! This sold-out Hollywood performance has been their biggest US show to date! These extraordinary Aussies implement sounds of folk, jazz, and even heavy metal in their psychedelic sounds. On recordings alone, their arrangements are complex and carry your mind on an entrancing journey from beginning to end, but these dudes are about 200x heavier than that and are absolute pure insanity live! Picture standing in a huge bubble that’s one big vivid light show. Visually you’re melting but all of your other senses are being taken on a rollercoaster by the energy of the thousands of people and by the gifted fingers of lead guitarists, Joey Walker and the the energetic maniac Stu Mackenzie. Your brain will basically never be the same.
What do King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, The Allman Brothers Band, Arcade Fire, The Doobie Brothers, Modest Mouse, and James Brown all have in common? They’re all incredible artists that operate with TWO DRUMMERS! King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s stage presence is powerful on way too many levels, but one of the most hypnotic qualities of their set is their mirrored drummers. Face to face and remaining perfectly synchronized throughout the entire performance were drummers Michael Cavanagh and Eric Moore. To add to the grooviness, behind them was an enormous screen of kaleidoscopic animations and digital art coordinated perfectly to every riff and key change, taking everyone on a visual psychotropic trip.
Like a modern-day Pink Floyd, their production was one smooth non-stop loop. One track just flowed effortlessly right into the next, even throughout tuning and guitar changes. They initiated both Orange County and Hollywood sets with ‘Digital Black’ and sent everyone home with ‘Gemma Knife’. King Gizzard hit tracks off their greatest albums, ‘I’m In Your Mind Fuzz’, ‘Nonagon Infinity’, and just about every 1 of the 5 albums they released in 2017. From start to finish, the entire production was one of the greatest live psychedelic-rock concerts someone can witness today.
These boys are serious when it comes to their setlists and if you were there you probably noticed that when they didn’t do an encore. At first, no encores might seem like a bummer but it’s actually quite refreshing when you think about it. Encores are always appreciated and viewed as a gift to the audience for being super great sports, but most of the time encores are just baloney little fake-outs. Why interrupt a great flow with a pretend exit when you can just have the whole show?! King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard don’t play, they intend to give their audience everything they got, and they get it done. It’s that simple and it’s another reason to love them. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are fearlessly creating classic rock in 2018 and if you’re not catching them live, you are missing out on a solid piece of future music history.
Catch these boys at one of their upcoming tour dates listed below! Calilfornians will have to wait patiently until Desert Daze to witness their wickedness again this year on October 12-14th!
Remaining tour dates:
06/18 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
06/19 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
06/20 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
06/21 – New Orleans, LA @ Republic New Orleans
06/22 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Outdoors – Waller Creek Amphitheatre
Coverage by Sade De La Espriella and Veronica Potes
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