If you were suffering from an geography crisis at the Old Bar in Fitzroy in Saturday night, you could be excused for thinking that you were in a) Spain, b) a swamp c) LA hanging with with the Gun Club; or d) in the middle of mindless booze-haze happiness. The Old Bar was busy well before bill toppers King Gizzard stormed the stage, testament to Melbourne’s kicking (and on this occasion screaming) music scene.
Midnight Woolf is no stranger to small, sweaty venues, so with the ‘intimate’ size of the band room at The Old Bar, sweat was being launched from the stage minutes into the set. And when the drummer’s name is Rabbitfoot Annie, you know that the beat is going to be moving quickly. Lead vocalist Fuzzhound Sanchez was in good form, opening the set with the smooth Spanish number ‘Bailare Sobre Tu Tumba’, before putting that rolling growl to other popular tunes ‘Oh! My Soul’ and aptly named ‘Can’t Slow Down’. Also in tight form was lead guitarist and band namesake Midnight Woolf, showering the audience with punchy guitar licks that had a foot in each of the garage-rock, swampy blues and punk rock camps. While the audience weren’t quite coerced to ‘just take their clothes off’ as several numbers suggested, Midnight Woolf definitely got those hips rocking and the pulse rate lifting.
Swaggering/stumbling up to the stage finally was King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard (which is suspected of translating to ‘we don’t give a flying shit’ in indie-tongue), and while an attitude of this nature can sometimes alienate an act from the crowd, there was a lot of love (and body parts) being thrown around to prove the opposite. The final night of King G’s Black Tooth tour was filled with what these guys have become renowned for – band members hustling on stage, reverbed, screechy vocals and just general outrageousness.
‘Just Because I Like You was the opening number’, which drew the crowd in with building ‘harmonies’ sung by all six band members, each jostling for enough space to reach for the microphones, probably resulting in a few souvenir cuts and bruises – but no doubt this is just another day at the office for the King Gizzard guys. For a band who’ve only been together just over six months, they had great instincts about where the jams were going, making their improvisation intriguing to watch.
While those who love to indulge in the genre labelling game would probably come up with something like ‘Nouveu-surf rock’, it’s pretty clear that the band don’t really care so much for labels, they’re just up there to have a damn good time. And when Stu Mackenzie discovered reverb, there was no looking back. New single ‘Black Tooth’ was full of just that, with the crowd getting very lively by this point – the front of stage area wasn’t safe if having two front teeth was high on the agenda. Mackenzie’s pitchy vocals reached into falsetto throughout parts of the set, complimenting the surf-rock-punk sound; making their sound part Vines-esque screeching, part (dare it be said) psychedelic guitar riffs, and part good old-fashioned rock (great pick work could have been the theme of the night).
With limited room to move on stage, it was only fair that several band members should stumble down into the crowd at some point, so as to logically have enough room to stand on their heads while finishing off a jam or two. The audience had come to see a crazy performance – and as much as the size of the band room allowed, they got it. Having a well-recorded material is one thing; consistently pulling off a great live show is another, but King Gizzard manage to do just that. Chuck a sickie from work if you need to catch these guys next time, their reputation precedes them for a reason.
– Dannika Bonser
