One of the best parts of getting to see King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard on their European tour in March was also getting introduced to and seeing the opening band, Los Bitchos just as many times (six, for the record).
This London-based quartet with an all-female core and Latin folklore influences will be touring the western U.S. in April, anchoring their tour with appearances at Coachella, Austin Psych Fest and one show in Brooklyn (find details for their tour here).
Their material is mostly instrumental, and lead guitarist Serra Petale squeezes an incredibly emotive tone out of her guitar. It nails down the cumbia sound at the heart of the band’s psychedelic vibe.
Petale sat down with Jam in the Stream before the sold out show in Oslo, Norway, March 8, about an hour before she was to take the Sentrum Scene stage.
The band did have the benefit of amped up crowds, hungry for King Gizz. Winning over such a crowd, however, is never a given, but Los Bitchos delivered on that front every night of the grueling tour (17 shows over 22 nights).
The band, which happened to cover King Gizz’s “Trapdoor” on a 7-inch single they released called Pah! (which also includes a cover of the classic, “Tequila”), received a lot of love from KGLW (guitarist Joey Walker shouted out to the band almost every night on the tour). Frontman Stu Mackenzie sat in with Los Bitchos, playing flute on the Gizz favorite at the March 20 show in Brussels.
Petale is a former label mate of King Gizz (at Heavenly Recordings while she was in the British indie pop band Kid Wave), as well as a big fan of the Australian monster rock band.
“I can say very, very safely that they have been a massive influence on our band,” she said. “Just in the way that Stu’s writing is so wild, and it’s so creative. It’s just nice to hear something like that that really goes outside the box, every single album, every single song. It’s been a big propellor for this band. I have learned a lot from their music. … And, yeah, just from the get-go, hearing all of their songs on their live sessions on (Seattle Public Radio station) KEXP, and then the live show itself is just out of control. Keeping up that energy for two hours, you don’t see many bands do that. Just when you don’t think it can go any further, it does, which is fucking wicked.”
I asked Petale about cumbia, a form of Latin folklore that originated in Colombia but has spread out to various parts of the world, and is said to have a blend of African, American Indian and European styles and percussion instruments.
It’s a major influence on Los Bitchos’ sound, which also treads heavily into pyschedelic rock.
“Well, I am from Australia so cumbia is quite new to me,” she said. “I started listening to it when we formed the band (2018). It was really interesting to learn the history of the rythyms and the music itself. I had no idea that there were different types of cumbia. So, for instance, Uruguayan cumbia is different from Argentinian, and etc., etc.”
Petale noted a Peruvian cumbia compilation album called, “The Roots of Chicha.”
“It’s this amazing instrumental album,” she said. “I would say that was definitely the springboard for forming Los Bitchos.”
There’s a lot of influences on this band from King Gizzard to Mötley Crüe, but cumbia is at the fore, something Petale said the band is still exploring, having released a full album (Let the Festivities Begin!) and a couple of other releases.
“I never really thought about those types of rythyms, those types of melodies and even thinking about instrumental music as a whole,” she said. “Because I was always playing in bands with lyrics, doing rock and stuff like that. … So this was really cool for me. And, yeah, it really opened my world up to a whole new realm of music that I’m still learning about.”
King Gizz isn’t the band’s first brush in the limelight.
Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand’s lead singer and guitarist Alex Kapranos produced the Los Bitchos’ LP. Los Bitchos has also toured with the popular band (conversely Franz Ferdinand is supporting the Pixies’ on their U.S. tour in June). The band also toured with Canadian singer-songwriter Mac DeMarco.
“We have done a couple of different tours with people we really love and respect, like Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand,” Petale said.
Petale, herself, is a big fan of 1980s metal bands, including Van Halen, Mötley Crüe and Poison. She mentioned the likes of Lita Ford, the London-born American guitarist who led Runaways, and the Scottish band Cocteau Twins, who, led by Robin Guthrie, helped define the Shoegaze sound.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I love a lot of pop. I really love the old Madonna stuff. I love the electronic stuff. I love a bit of everything, I guess, it’s an ecletic mix.
On Eddie Van Halen: “So creative, along with David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar, whichever era you like to go in, although those are only two eras I care to acknowledge. I think no matter what the song, Eddie was just always like, it’s like the guitar is another voice. He’s not just playing some chords. I’ve learned so much stuff from him, even the types of chords he plays. They’re weird. Even on a song like, “Running with the Devil,” it’s a weird chord progression he’s doing. It’s like, who comes up with that? But it all goes so well. Like, it’s perfect, and it’s just wild. It’s like a zing of electricity.”
It’s not so much that you will necessarily think about Van Halen when you hear Petale, but the way she describes his guitar playing like another voice — that is what she is often doing, even when the band covers “Trapdoor,” Mackenzie’s vocals translated to very expressive guitar phrases that just strike at a listener’s heart.
Petale said her playing has been influenced by the late Eddie Van Halen. Photo by Javier Serna
The band has a retro sound that sounds as if it’s being filtered through a record player.
“I reckon it’s just the chorus pedal that I’m constantly using,” she said. “Anything that is chorus, for me, takes me back to like 1980s rock, which I fucking love. Cock rock. I love it. I love my Mötley Crüe, although Mick Mars doesn’t use a lot of chorus, but Eddie Van Halen, that type of stuff. Even any of the pop stuff, it’s all chorusy. For me, that is my favorite sound on a guitar. So that chorus pedal is on the whole time."
Asked if the band played any instruments that would be traditionally used in cumbia, Petale said there weren’t any, but she mentioned that sound engineer Javier Weyler, originally from Venezuela, had lots of percussion instruments from all over the world that the band utilized when recording their debut album.
“We use a bit of everything because there is a bit of Turkish influence,” she said. “I am half Turkish. So we used a lot of baglama (a Turkish guitar related to the Greek bouzouki). It has a very distinct sound. And Alex (Kapranos), our producer, had a lot of that stuff going around as well. I think one thing that is interesting about what we do is we love to do a mix. It is not strictly cumbia. It is not strictly rock. It is not strictly Turkish psychedelia, you know. It is a nice melting pot of stuff we like to listen to.”
The band itself is a melting pot.
Petale played drums in a previous band (British indie pop band Kid Wave) and plays bongo on a few songs. Photo by Javier Serna
Agustina Ruiiz, who does vocals, percussion and plays keys (and keytar), is from Uruguay.
Nic Crawshaw, the band’s drummer, is from the U.K. The band’s bass player, Josefine Jonsson is from Sweden.
“We all moved to London independently of each other,” Petale said. “I’ve probably known Josey for 10 or 11 years now. She’s best mates with the girl who was the singer in my old band. … It was me and Agustina doing it ourselves at the start, sort of touring around and getting our friends to fill in, and then after a while our shows started to get a little bit more regular and regular. So we needed permanent members. I knew Josey had left her previous band. … We scooped her up. And then we found Nic via Facebook.”
The band, which is sometimes backed up by male players as they were on some nights during the Gizz tour, didn’t set out to be an all-women front.
“It just sort of happened that way,” Petale said. “I mean, it’s an amazing dynamic. I’ve never played with just all girls before. It’s always been a mix. … I think the all-women thing was just kind of an accident.”
The energy this band has is undeniable.
I asked Petale what her secret was for winning over rooms. I’ve seen plenty of shows where the opening act, despite having a crowd gathered, did not have the success these women did night in and night out supporting King Gizz.
“I think we are just having a good time together,” she said. “I can’t really say there’s a secret. But our music is easy to dance to. And even if we are so tired and like struggling or whatever, it’s like all of that seems to just like go away on stage, and the love and support that we have for one another takes over, just joking around, and the songs are fucking fun to play. I don’t know. It’s like we just have fun. And if people see you have fun, it’s more likely that they might have a little bit of fun themselves."