Back in the ’80s, Keith Richards once described Tom Waits as “a great bunch of guys.” Whenever people ask me what King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard sound like, I am tempted to paraphrase Keef: They’re a great bunch of bands.
Of course, great doesn’t really do justice to The Gizz. Neither do amazing, awesome, jaw-dropping, stunning, staggering or the rest of the overused superlatives people routinely apply to their favourite musicians, deserved or not. You’d need a much bigger adjective — perhaps even a word that doesn’t yet exist — to get a handle on these wild and woolly Australians.
Anyone who has dipped more than a toe into their vast discography — more than two dozen studio albums in 14 years, along with nearly that many live releases, compilations, EPs and whatnot — knows that musically, they’re almost unclassifiable. Sure, you can call them a psychedelic rock band. And most of the time, you’d be right. But sometimes they’re also a prog band. Or a thrash metal band. Or a pop band. Or a garage-rock band. Or a stoner-rock band. Or a country band. Or a jam band. Or a math-rock band. Or a blues band. Or a boogie band. Or even an electronica band.
And perhaps more importantly, they toggle between them all without warning or hesitation. No two of their studio albums are the same. No two live shows are identical. In fact, they make something of a point of not playing the same songs two days in a row. Nor do they care to take requests, as I learned firsthand. Like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get from The Gizz. You just know it’s gonna be something weird and wonderful that you haven’t heard before.
That was true the first time I saw them in 2022 in Vancouver, when they knocked me out with their epic songs, near-psychic interaction and musical precision. And it was just as true when I saw them again at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage on Wednesday. The Australian sextet are touring behind their 26th — yes, 26th — studio album Flight b741, a relatively loose batch of ’70s-style fare that would fit in just fine on a mixtape with classic Joe Walsh, Little Feat, John Fogerty, Supertramp, 10cc, Steely Dan, Slade, Deep Purple and the like.
But if you expected a night of laid-back retro-boogie, blues and glam jams, you were in for a surprise. As always, singer-guitarist Stu Mackenzie and co. were all over the damn place. They started off in full-metal racket mode, with tracks from two of their heaviest, fastest and loudest albums — Infest The Rats’ Nest and the grandly overtitled PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. Eventually, they meandered their way into a mid-set trio of songs from the new album, including the arena-rockin’, fist-pumpin’ foot-stopmin’ Field Of Vision (aka the song that answers the musical question: What would it sound like if The Rolling Stones’ Live With Me, Deep Purple’s Space Truckin’ and INXS’s New Sensation had a baby?).
After that, they hauled out classics like Robot Stop and Gamma Knife, so I figured they were ramping up for the stereotypical big finish with crowd-pleasers and fan faves like Rattlesnake and Cellophane. Well, call me a silly billy. In typical fashion, they pulled a hard 180° by hauling a big-ass table crammed with electronica gear to the centre of the stage, dumping their guitars and ending the show with a half-hour EDM workout that transformed the pit from a roiling mosh to a full-on rave. I wager almost no one saw that changeup coming. But near as I can tell, everyone loved it — especially the dude two rows in front of me who was pumping devil horns like he was at a Slayer gig.
I could blather on about individual songs and players and performances and whatnot, but why bother? You can (and should) watch the entire show for yourself above. And no, it’s not some crappy hand-held bootleg filmed from the crowd on a phone. It’s a multi-camera, pro-shot version from the band — who are livestreaming all the shows on this tour for free. As if you needed more proof of their greatness.
Enjoy. See you in the pit at next year’s tour.
