SPONGE

Volume 2 - kIng gIzzArD AnD The lIzArD WIzArD @ Ally PAlly

By BeTh mounTforD

11:01am at work. Phone buzzes. Ethan. And henceforth I quote directly:

“Do you potentially wanna come see king gizzard ? My mates got a spare ticket , he’s giving away for free.”

7:15pm stepping off the train at Alexandra Palace station. I convened with friends by the bin at the top of the platform. And so began our ascent up the hill. The crowd conga’d from the train in swarms, swelling and winding through the street, moving ever upwards. Ally Pally sat high on the crest, the city a low lying moat surrounding it. I hadn’t expected such a grand marvel of architecture and found myself craning my neck like a child at a theme park. I wanted to know about the history of this building. I wanted a guided tour. Imagining King Gizzard on stage seemed wildly incongruent.

The very very cool Los Bitchos were already playing when we arrived, and it dawned on me where I was. Sure I hadn’t expected Ally Pally to be such a beautiful spectacle of a venue, but I hadn’t expected any of this. I had gone to work like any other day and now I was looking live upon a band who’s KEXP performance had dictated most of my Youtube algorithm. It was so rash, so unadvised, so sudden. Our group became flustered and disorganised, scrambling for pints, always one of us missing. In impatience and awe we stood around the bar for so long that a cleaner encircled us - confining us to a small ring of sticky floor.

Ethan, who had so far been very patient and well behaved, now had a serious look on his face. He was also bouncing, from foot to foot. It was a look (and a stance) that said he was through with all of the pint-drinking pleasantries, and would wait for us no longer.

“I’ll meet you here after” he said and sprinted face-first, to the front of the dense crowd, heading as close as his bullish mindset would take him.

The marvel of the building wore off when we went to join the crowd. The pitch on which we all stood was vast and flat and unforgiving for those under six foot tall. It always surprises me at big venues when the people on stage are just normal sized people. My subconscious logic presumes that their status of central importance to the event should grow them physically to fill the huge space provided for them.

Saying that, imagining the members of King Gizzard as giants became immediately terrifying as they began to play. Though they appeared to me as specks so tiny I could not decipher arm from guitar, they were big enough where it mattered - in sound. And from the comparatively tiny slice of the King Gizz discography with which I am familiar, we got a relatively heavy and unique set.

There was lots of beard-stroking going on around me, and also a surprising amount of men who might be described as ‘lads’. One guy behind me exclaimed “I’m so happy I’m stoned.”

Hypertension, Sadie Sorceress and Hot Water banged hard. There were moments of reprieve for boogying - I had my best boogie to Shanghai, tossing my drink in the air and catching it like a pancake in a pan. Movement in the crowd did pick up throughout the gig, the scale of vibrancy gradually rolling back as it does. Ethan later reported that the front-centre crowd were “fucking wild” - on par with Laneway 2020 (IYKYK - forever in our hearts), where we I had seen King Gizz for the first and only time ever before; a mosh which I thought I might die in.

Of course, of course, of course, I was in the bathroom when they began to play Work This Time. I didn’t bother with the crowd when I came out, I stayed at the back and leaned right back into that gorgeous solo, which felt very good. Everyone felt the sentimentality of this one. Everyone considered themselves lucky to have witnessed this live.

They ended with a Gizz song I had never heard before. I shazzammed it - which seemed like a weird thing to do at a gig - but which can surely be forgiven in the context of the prolific Gizzards. I didn’t care anyway because I HAD to know this song. Something about this one bit GOT me. It just felt so familiar and mmm, like, enthralling. It pissed me off because they kept tangentially diverging from this one bit - this one fucking bit - that GOT me.

And herein lies the essence of Gizz for me: they require a patience, and a lot of hours spent to appreciate everything they are. I do not have this patience. It’s like they agree to give me everything I could ever want in a minute and a half but then I’m obliged to hang around for a 16-minutelong face-melting, self-indulgent guitar wank before they’ll give me something else I like.

Anyway, the calibre of gig at the disposal of an unplanned evening is unrivalled in this city.