Back in the day labels would push bands to churn out a couple of albums each year, the erratic quality of the product counter-balanced by maintaining popular interest and a baseline of commercial activity. King Gizzard have released seven albums in four years (plus an EP), and each is different in its own mesmerising, psychedelic way.
Before the headliners we catch Hierophants, the surf coast, slacker punk incarnation of Devo. But whereas Devo took a discursive scythe to the façade of social normalisation, Hierophants are frustrated, and just a little bit pissed off with everything. In true punk fashion, songs just come to a stop, no fanfare, no pretence. The world needs bands like Hierophants, even if not everyone realises it.
The first half of King Gizzard’s set seems dominated by new material, which, like suggested in a recent interview, sounds like it’s built from a heavy metal base. But every Gizzard song is an epic journey, weaving around corners, flying into the clouds, diving into lysergic waters, a collage of melody, riffage and kaleidoscopic vision. Stu Mackenzie has suggested his creative streak stems from his hyperactive and deficient attention quotient. I’m not a big fan of psychology and its quest to define an abstract concept of normality, but there does seem some latent psychological aspect to Mackenzie’s prodigious creative activities. And when you’ve got a band as tight as King Gizzard, you can set your mind free and follow your muse.
An over enthusiastic punter channels Roddy Radalj at the Tote in the late 1980s, but only manages to bring the lighting rig down. The band plays on, checking regularly that their equipment isn’t the victim of their excited fanbase. Mackenzie plays flute like it’s an R&B instrument: 4/4 staccato riffs, Herbie Mann via Mikey Young. Ambrose Kenny-Smith squalls away on harmonica, a Chicago blues wind bellowing through a tropical psychedelic storm.
The set ducks into some slightly older territory: Float Along, I’m In Your Mind, Cellophane, seguing into neighbouring and distant musical pastures and back again, with ne’er a dividing seam to be seen.
You can close your eyes and forget everything else, just for a moment, or as long as King Gizzard keep the trip going. There’s some plaintive cries of “one more song”, but to no avail. It’s a Wednesday night, and someone has to return a semblance of reality to proceedings.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Loved: The fact that the unrecorded material was arguably the best of the entire set.
Hated: That there wasn’t another hour of crazy-arse psychedelic jams.
Drank: Coopers Pale.
