Watch: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s Stu Mackenzie Crowdsurfs into the River in Portland, Maine
Image via YouTube
Last night, Aug. 20, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard brought its North American tour to Thompson’s Point in Portland, Maine, where the genre-disrupting Australian psych-rock unit reached new levels of thrilling strangeness.
After kicking off its celebration of Flight b741–the ensemble’s 26th studio album, which landed on Aug. 9–with an inaugural set at Washington D.C.’s The Anthem on Aug. 15, then racing through a pair of three-hour marathon sets at Queens, N.Y.’s Forest Hills Stadium through the weekend, King Gizzard had set a high bar for the final stop in its Northeast leg. With some dynamo theatrics from frontman Stu Mackenzie, the group proved its capacity to endlessly exceed expectations.
Gizz opened its show with its second-ever live staging of “Theia,” the futuristic opening song from its krautrock-inspired 2023 album The Silver Cord. After following with the title track from that project and thrash metal headbangers “Gaia,” “Flamethrower” and “Mars for the Rich,” the group slid into “This Thing,” the dreamy standout from 2019’s Fishing for Fishies, which it bolstered with quotes from M-Beat’s jungle classic “Incredible.” The band then launched into the centerpiece of its performance, totally transitioning “I’m In Your Mind,” “I’m Not In Your Mind,” “Cellophane” and “I’m In Your Mind Fuzz” to retrace the opening sequence from its 2014 breakthrough album of the same name.
After this raucous sprint, King Gizzard pulled up with “Le Risque,” a fluttering rockabilly groove and its first Flight b741 entry of the evening. The band led this theme into the live debut of “Rats in the Sky,” then returned to fan favorites for a ripping “Iron Lung” and soul-stirring rendition of the “Let Me Mend the Past,” a jangling blues-rocker from 2013 that Ambrose Kenny Smith capped off with a tease of Etta James’ “I’d Rather Go Blind.” In the wake of “Trapdoor,” the band closed with “The Dripping Tap,” its 18-minute-minimum operatic psych-punk odyssey from 2022.
Eight minutes into this grand finale, the band slowed to a stop as Smith and Joey Walker sung, “I wanna see you take Stu over to that lake!” At another explosive, shreddy peak, Mackenzie removed his shoes, shirt and monitors and cried out “Let’s go for a swim!”
“Does anyone know where the lemonade stand is?” he asked the crowd at Thompson’s Point, which stands on the banks of the Fore River. “They told me to go to the left of the lemonade. What’s going to happen is I’m gonna jump out and we’re gonna have a big group cuddle, yeah? And then we’re gonna go into that muddy-as-fuck body of water next to the airport and do some weird shit, then come back. Sound good?”
After laying out his plan, the artist surfed through the audience and plunged into the water, all while the band played on. When Mackenzie returned to the stage, dripping wet, he led the group through the song’s final movement and sent the crowd off into the night. Watch a fan-recorded video and official stream of the unforgettable moment below.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard return to the stage tonight for a performance at Toronto, Ontario’s Budweiser Stage. For tickets and more information on the band’s sprawling tour, which runs through the end of November, visit kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com.
