One of the biggest questions for fans of King Gizzard coming into the band’s 15-show U.S. residency tour was whether the band would play anything off their 23rd album, Changes.
The band broke the ice to that question mid-way through the second of two underground shows with the live debut of “Astroturf” at The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn., June 2.
It was a question bouncing around in my mind as the band had sooner live debuted several songs off their forthcoming LP (I’ll kindly just abbreviate it to PetroDragonic Apocalypse here) and yet not a single song had been played live off the album that the band spent five years working on, the last of five albums they released in 2022.
Here is the setlist KGLW.net had posted at the time of publication for this article. For the latest updates to this setlist, which is under a review process by the site’s setlist wizards, go to this link.
I was not the only one who wondered judging by the comments I got the night before wearing a bootleg shirt featuring the cover of said album, an incredibly jazzy psychedelic masterpiece worthy of five years of work.
It dawned on me that they put out 10 albums during that same five-year period and that maybe it would take them another five years to play something from it live. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and more than one person suggested to me “Astroturf” might be first. That was a solid guess, since the band recently released a music video for the song, the only one from the album that has gotten such treatment.
But this show was full of treats.
They opened the set by returning to 2014’s I’m In Your Mind Fuzz, an album they drew from the night before with a scalding “Hot Water” that singed everybody in attendance twice, since they came back to it late in the show.
On this night, they played the cleverly written first four songs off the album, “I’m In Your Mind,” “I’m Not In Your Mind,” “Cellophane,” and “I’m In Your Mind Fuzz.” Those four songs had last been played at Cirque Royal/Koninklijk in Brussels, Belgium on March 20, as was 2019’s Infest the Rats’ Nest’s “Planet B,” which was also pulled out on this night.
“When I’m In Your Mind Fuzz
Then I’m In Your Mind”
“Predator X” off last year’s Omnium Gatherum came out, then “Converge,” which was debuted off the new album at the tour opener in Boston May 28, and then “This Thing” from 2019’s Fishing for Fishies.
Then it was two more off Omnium Gatherum with a “Magenta Mountain,” that got into the deep techno funk thanks to the electronica musings of Joey Walker, who fiddled with synth knobs. Percussionist Michael Cavanagh also contributed some late gong play during this Magenta.
That flowed into Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s “The Grim Reaper,” and then “Astroturf” came out, a song that has lead Stu Mackenzie on flute.
This funky song also happens to be about well-manicured lawns and the impact that they have on the environment in the name of vanity.
“Suitable texture
Suitable color
Miniature forest
Better than nature”
The show was heading towards its completion, but the band had much still left.
“The Garden Goblin,” led by Cook Craig with some cave references sprinkled into the lyrics. The Goblin preceded a lengthy, sometimes dark “Ice V,” which got into type II jam territory.
The improvisation that flowed out of this jam vehicle off 2022’s Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava produced some of the night’s most incredible music moments, and I can’t wait to go back and listen to this whole show, particularly the stretch between “This Thing” and the end of the show. But also the first four songs, from their early psychedelic masterpiece. It was the first time I’d caught them in 10 shows.
And the show wasn’t over.
King Gizzard shuffled a couple of favorites off 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, around a song from both the K.G. and L.W. albums to close out the show. That did require Mackenzie’s yellow flying microtonal banana guitar would make an appearance. He played much of the night with his Gibson Holy Explorer axe.
The foreboding “Doom City” was the first of those songs to come out.
Then “Automation,” off 2020’s K.G.
Kenny-Smith delivered the folklore for what turned out be a spirited and incredibly psychedelic version of “Billabong Valley.” He had been handed the flying banana, which is more of a prop in his hands (he is not one of the band’s three main guitarists), despite his proficiency with several different musical instruments.
“Mad dog Morgan
He never gave a warning”
So pyschedelic.
That set up the closing spot, a heavy “K.G.L.W. (Outro),” with Mackenzie back on banana, Walker delivering low, low vocal effects as the song was given to fans about as dirty as it gets. This was funky, deep down metal that kept building as it is composed to do so.
The show was over, and minds had been blown.