It was another rainy show for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard as they opened their first of three shows at Remlinger Farms outside of Seattle Friday.
Stu Mackenzie and Joey Walker came out shirtless but in black, cover-all fishing bibs, apparently dressed for the sloppy, wet occasion.
They launched directly into a pair of heavy songs off their Infest the Rats’ Nest LP (2019) in “Mars for the Rich” and the thrashy “Organ Farmer.”
Then it was another loud number in “Supercell,” off their new album which had been released earlier that day.
PetroDragonic Apocalypse or Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation is the band’s 24th LP. I was able to start saying that title off memory the day before it was released.
Rumors that the band would play the album in its entirety during this show did not come to fruition. Click here for KGLW.net’s setlist with full notes.
Then it was the opening four songs from the band’s psychedelic classic I’m In Your Mind Fuzz LP, released in 2014.
“Old school shit,” guitarist Joey Walker said, jawing with bandmate Ambrose Kenny-Smith.
It started out with “I’m In Your Mind,” into “I’m Not In Your Mind,” which included an “Alter Me I” tease, a “The Dripping Tap” quote and “Cellophane” teases.
This decision pleased the roughy 3,000 gathered on this mostly wooded Washington property. We got to hear a lot of harmonica from Kenny-Smith in these songs.
Then they played “Cellophane.”
They jammed it pretty hard before getting into “I’m In Your Mind Fuzz.”
The band next went to “Sense,” the pop song off their 2015 LP Paper Mâché Dream Balloon. The band dedicated the song to John Frusciante, guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and it wasn’t the only reference in this show to a popular group from the 1990s.
This was a pretty psychedelic version of the song, worthy of being dedicated to such a psychedelic G.
Next up was “The Grim Reaper,” off 2022’s Omnium Gatherum.
Kenny-Smith prefaced the song by saying, “All right, here’s some Beastie Boys.”
The band’s synthesizer stage came into play, with Joey Walker, getting into some deep techno funk as Mackenzie hopped around stage with his flute, which he put to good use between Kenny-Smith’s verses.
Kenny-Smith jumped off the stage and closed the considerable distance between the edge of the stage and the crowd, working several verses on the edge of the crowd.
As the song finished out, Kenny-Smith sang, “Intergalactic planetary,” and “Another dimension,” nodding to the Beastie Boys’ 1998 single “Intergalactic.”
The band has generally not repeated songs from one show to the next but next played “Change,” off their last album Changes, released last year. The song saw its live debut at the last show on Tuesday in Chicago. And “Change,” was actually the second of three repeats from the third night in Chicago, with “Mars for the Rich,” and “Hot Water,” all being repeated.
“Change for its own sake
Uniformity gave me a belly ache”
Kenny-Smith’s rap section had almost funky Christmas sleigh-ride breakbeat going for it.
Here’s hoping this song, with a strong message, and multiple sections will make it into the regular rotation. It showcases several band members, including the weird but cool vocal range of the band’s four main vocalists, in Mackenzie, Kenny-Smith, Cook Craig and Walker.
Shanghai, off 2021’s Butterfly 3000, was next and included Scientist dub quotes, according to KGLW.net. The Scientist remixed the song for the 2022 remix album Butterfly 3001. It included some late gong strikes from drummer Michael Cavanagh.
The band then went back to Omnium with a super synthy version of “Ambergris,” and then back to Mind Fuzz with “Hot Water,” which included “Joey Walker” substituted for “Hot Water.”
They opted for three in a row from 2017’s Murder of the Universe, with “Altered Beast I,” “Alter Me I,” and “Altered Beast II.”
All that flowed into the show closer “Robot Stop,” off 2016’s Nonagon Infinity. It was loud way to end, the way the band started the show, and then Mackenzie said “Thanks for coming to watch the fishermen from Australia play music for you. So nice of you to come.”