It was 2015 – just eight years ago – that an upstart band from Melbourne, Australia called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard appeared in the teeny-tiniest print on the flyer for FYF Festival in Los Angeles. Fast forward to 2023 and not only are they playing in the city’s most prestigious venue, they’re headlining the Hollywood Bowl while promising to play a three-hour set.
The Bowl was packed to the top rows, with scores of fans wearing their KGATLW gear or peculiarly, willing to wait in what looked like hours-long lines to buy merch.
Most artists that can pull off a behemoth of a set like that have been around for decades – think Paul McCartney, the Foo Fighters or The Rolling Stones. But King Gizzard are different from most bands–they probably have about as much released material as those aforementioned bands over a fraction of the time. So, 180 minutes of music doesn’t actually even scratch the surface of what this band has released over the last ten years. Their sustained, meteoric rise is rare in a fickle music industry, but these Australians have gritted it, constantly touring and managing to release twenty three albums in a decade.
King Gizzard is well-suited for this kind of marathon set because of their eclectic sonic palate. The result was what felt like a concert featuring four or five different bands, as they jumped from Spaghetti Western garage rock to Eastern-influenced psych freakouts to galloping thrash to lounge-y pop and much more. And just from a physical standpoint, it was a feat of strength to see those six young men putting every ounce of energy into the songs for that length of time without a hint of fading.
Going back to the fans, and maybe it’s because of the group’s tendency to write meandering, jammy songs and explore every genre that tickles their fancy, the crowd was extremely eclectic. Of course there were your hipsters and punks, which is to be expected of a psych rock band. What was pleasantly surprising to see was how much broad appeal the band had – particularly among the jam band set. There were plenty of Grateful Dead and Phish shirts speckled throughout the crowd.
The set opened with a video of an old man introducing the band, proudly proclaiming their hometown of Melbourne. After the band came out, guitarist Ambrose Kenny-Smith said the man in the video was his father Broderick, and that he was supposed to perform alongside the band at this show–their Residency Tour finale–but unfortunately passed away, so the show was dedicated to him. Stu MacKenzie sang a narrow majority of the songs, though it’s hard to say there’s a definitive frontman of the band. Kenny-Smith handled lead vocals nearly as much of the time, Joey Walker sang a fair amount, and Cook Craig had a few songs on which he took lead vocals.
With the backdrop of an ominous voiceover, the sextet opened the warm night at the Bowl with four sparse, Spaghetti Western-influenced tracks that were a mix of blues, post-rock and garage rock. These songs, “Eyes Like the Sky,” “Year of Our Lord,” “The Raid” and “Evil Man” were from the band’s early days, their sophomore release Eyes Like the Sky. The voiceover narrated tales of the frontier, including Native Americans, child soldiers and gun battles. It’s notable that this was the first time the band had played the first three songs since 2018. For “Evil Man,” it was the first since 2016.
Once the first half hour of the set was complete, MacKenzie thanked the audience for letting them play those deep cuts. They had 180 minutes to fill, so who could blame them for a little self-indulgence?
“Let’s fucking go!” shouted MacKenzie as the band catapulted into the fan favorites “Rattlesnake” and “Pleura.” While “Rattlesnake” initially comes across as a straightforward garage rock song with psychedelic flair, the background of the song and the album it comes from are worth mentioning. There’s a bit of an Eastern sound to the song, and that’s because it came from a period in which the band was heavily experimenting in microtonal music.
To keep it simple, microtones have smaller intervals. In the West, most guitars and other common instruments have semitone intervals, but many Eastern instruments have smaller intervals which gives them a distinctive sound. KGATLW actually built their own instruments, like guitars with extra frets for microtones. That effect along with the aggressive psych rock came through powerfully during the set, revving up the audience for the decidedly heaviest portion of the night. It goes without saying that by this point in the show, the Bowl was well-shrouded in smoke, more so from the audience than the small machines on stage.
The chugging, palm-muted metal riffs of “Gaia” whipped what was already a pogoing audience into a full-blown circle pit. That certainly has to be a rarity at what is normally a prim and proper, or even demure music venue. There aren’t many metal bands that play at the Bowl (especially a non-lease event), but King Gizzard managed to sneak in at least twenty minutes of pure moshing madness. After “Gaia,” the heavy metal trip continued with the similar-sounding “Gila Monster” (so similar in fact, that the band reprised “Gaia” at the end of the latter song), “Super Cell” and “Witchcraft.” “Organ Farmer” was the last metal song of the night, though it had a bit more of a stoner element than the previous thrashers.
If you don’t care for KGATLW’s metal proclivities, you were spared for the final two hours of the set. “Crumbling Castle” was led by the synths, and while the guitars had some distortion on “The Fourth Colour,” there was no growling, shouting or squealing guitar solos to be heard. “The Grim Reaper” represented the band’s foray into hip-hop, and while the music was just fine, it inspired some cringe-worthy dancing in the audience.
“Magenta Mountain” was an epic psych-pop adventure from Omnium Gatherum, the most well-represented album of the night. The song opened as atmospheric dream-pop, becoming noodly-er and heavier with every passing minute. The band only played twenty four songs over the course of three hours, so as expected, in the live setting, many of the songs were pushed well past their recorded running length.
“Down the Sink” was sung by Craig, and “Astroturf” was easily the funkiest moment of the night, especially because it included an extended drum solo from Michael Cavanagh, who was hands down the MVP of the band. He seamlessly and flawlessly transitioned between genres, intensity and time signatures. You really could have spent the entire set just watching him perfect his craft.
“Shanghai” was a definite highlight of the band’s Bowl set, and veered significantly from its recorded version. It opened as a soul-inflected dub-influenced sound, transitioning to a joyous, motorik Krautrock that reminded of peak-era Hookworms. After “The Garden Goblin,” a simple psych-pop song that would be right at home on a modern version of the Beatles’ White Album, the band members gathered on stage to take some shots. While the players in King Gizzard were all mic’d (except for the drummer and bassist), they didn’t spend a lot of time interacting with the massive audience. Despite that, they seemed extremely relatable and the joy of concluding their 2023 tour at the Hollywood Bowl was palpable.
After one last laid-back tune in “Ambergris,” it was back to some more punk psych with the knotty and gnarly “Iron Lung” and the spindly-but-at-times-punk “Hypertension.” Next came the jammy “Magma,” and as audiences looked at their phones, they realized there was at least seventeen minutes left in the set. At that moment, MacKenzie announced that they would be playing their last song. Would they not technically fulfill their promise to fill 180 minutes with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard? Hell no. Next up, “The Dripping Tap.”
Released last year as the opening song on Omnium Gatherum, “The Dripping Tap” is over 18 minutes long in recorded form. Hitting 180 minutes was a non-issue. This song is one of their best, though it does take some patience. It opens with the chorus, sung in a soulful late ‘60s inflection. Then, it takes a hard veer into psychedelic noise rock for a solid five or six minutes before gloriously returning to the chorus with a jangly, distorted guitar riff and unrelenting drums. It’s the kind of achievement few bands can make, uncompromising in the jam but also willing to throw a bone with an irresistible, goosebump-inducing hook. It was the perfect finale for the finale of their tour. In a perfect encapsulation of the night, MacKenzie shouted “We all win! We all win together!”
Setlist:
Eyes of the Sky
Year of Our Lord
The Raid
Evil Man
Rattlesnake
Pluera
Gaia
Gila Monster
Super Cell
Witchcraft
Organ Farmer
Crumbling Castle
The Fourth Colour
The Grim Reaper
Magenta Mountain
Down the Sink
Astroturf
Shanghai
The Garden Goblin
Ambergris
The Iron Lung
Hypertension
Magma
The Dripping Tap
File photo credit: Mauricio Alvarado
Leave a Comment