Recorded barely a month after King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released their breakthrough album, Nonagon Infinity, Live in San Francisco ’16 chronicles the band playing a small club before they would soon be filling large concert halls and curating their own music festival. The power of a KGATLW show is on full display, and it’s great to hear them still with a raw edge and eager to promote Nonagon Infinity to the world.
A good chunk of Nonagon Infinity is here for us, including the opener “Robot Stop,” which is a pleaser to the eager, appreciative crowd. KGATLW come out like a flame thrower unleashed on an audience made up of hungry fire elementals. “Hot Water,” with its happy flute solos, keeps everyone bouncing. There’s barely time to breathe by the time we get to “Big Fig Wasp,” which has great double-teaming of guitars and drums that must’ve blown the audience’s minds as good as it sounds on this.
As wild as that is, “Gamma Knife” is somehow crazier – launching the show, audience, and venue like a cannonball across the California salt flats. There’s a brief pause as they build into “People Vultures” to let the audience cheer and hydrate for a moment before thunder rolls over them.
By the time lead singer Stu MacKenzie asks, “What’s goin’ on?” before “Trapdoor,” I imagine some of the answers he got included, “I can’t feel my face!” and “I feel like I’ve run a marathon!” “Trapdoor” slows things down a bit, but not by much as its groove is made for dancing. The double-shot of “I’m in Your Mind” and “I’m Not in Your Mind” makes for a wild trip. “Cellophane” moves back and forth between psychedelic grooves and flat-out punk rock screams. Everyone agrees that “I’m in Your Mind Fuzz” pretty much sums up how the audience feels by this point – fuzzed-out and tripping. Someone in the audience has lost their glasses by this point, but thankfully the band finds and returns them to the owner.
“Yeah! Fuck yeah!” a woman yells at the beginning of “The River.” I agree with her, as it’s a great live rendition of the happy psychedelic tune that last almost eleven minutes. The song drifts into space now and then, leaving the audience thinking the song is over before coming back to further hypnotize them. They follow it with “Evil Death Roll” to kick out the jams once again and blast the paint off the back walls. They close the show with over twenty-two minutes of “Head On Pill,” which lulls the audience into premature cheering multiple times as it winds across a desert dune like a sidewinder that’s just eaten a psychedelic mushroom.
It’s one of the best of multiple live albums KGATLW have put out in the last couple years, and a great addition to any collection of psych-rock or live music.
Keep your mind open.
[Don’t forget to subscribe before you split.]
