King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Offer 3 Debuts During Acoustic Concert In Brighton

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard delivered an acoustic concert at Brighton Dome in Brighton, UK on Friday. The Australian rockers debuted a brand new song, “Mirage City,” and also offered live premieres of tracks off Paper Mâché Dream Balloon and Sketches of Brunswick East.

King Gizzard — Stu Mackenzie, Joey Walker, Michael Cavanagh, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, Cook Craig and Lucas Harwood — began their acoustic concert with “Iron Lung” from their LP Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, the third of five studio albums they released in 2022.

The band then unveiled new song, “Mirage City,” which saw guitarists Stu Mackenzie and Joey Walker along with Ambrose Kenny-Smith — who played piano for the show — sharing lead vocal duties on the country-tinged number. Watch below.

KGLW naturally leaned heavy on their 2015 acoustic album, Paper Mâché Dream Balloon, beginning with “Most Of What I Like,” which contained teases of Fat Boy Slim’s “Praise You.” While born near London, Norman Cook (Fat Boy Slim) attended Brighton Polytechnic and began developing his music career in the South England city.

The group then offered the live debut of Paper Mâché Dream Balloon’s “Time = $$$” and also performed the album’s “The Bitter Boogie,” “Trapdoor” and “Sense.” Additionally, KGLW delivered the first live rendition of “You Can Be Your Silhouette” from their 2017 collaborative album with Mild High Club, Sketches of Brunswick East.

While King Gizz are renowned for their great banter, the Brighton concert kicked it up a notch as is customary during acoustic shows. Following staple “Hot Water” Joey said, “There’s an extra acoustic guitar here which is actually microtonal. Thank you Martin for giving us our guitars, but they fucked up and only gave us one microtonal guitar. So what I suggest is that Stu sings ‘Rattlesnake’ solo.”

Stu then sang a bit of the Flying Microtonal Banana favorite ahead of a “white lie” from Joey about Australia having “heaps” of rattlesnakes. Another cool moment came after “Trapdoor” when Joey called drummer Michael Cavanagh down and “interviewed” him about when he started playing drums.

The show also contained an acoustic rendering of the recently debuted new song “Sad Pilot” and came to a close with PetroDragonic Apocalypse standout “Witchcraft.” Stu remarked that a fan had given him a CD of “folk” takes on King Gizz songs including “Witchcraft,” spurring them to include it in the Brighton concert. KGLW thanked the fan who was in attendance.

Watch the banter and acoustic “Witchcraft”:

Listen to the complete show below via Tora Tapes:

The penultimate show of King Gizzard’s European Tour takes place tonight in Lyon, France before they wrap the trek in Milan on Tuesday. The band kicks off their North American Tour on August 15 in Washington D.C. Scroll down for their full tour routing with ticket info.

Setlist (via KGLW.net)

Acoustic Set 1: Iron Lung, Mirage City[1], Most Of What I Like, Time = $$$[1], Let Me Mend the Past, You Can Be Your Silhouette[1] > Raw Feel, The Bitter Boogie > Hot Water, Trapdoor, Sad Pilot, Sense, This Thing, Slow Jam 1, Witchcraft

Footnotes:

[1] Debut

Show Notes: Iron Lung contained Witchcraft teases. Most Of What I Like contained Praise You (Fatboy Slim) teases. Time = $$$ was introduced as “Stairway to Heaven” (Led Zeppelin), which was then teased. The Bitter Boogie contained the drum pattern from Muddy Water and a lyric change to “shits his pants”. Hot Water contained a Cellophane tease. Following Hot Water, Joey noted that the band has a microtonal acoustic guitar, but only one, and jokingly suggested that Stu should play Rattlesnake solo, who then sang it along with teases of it from Joey and Ambrose. Soon after, Stu teased “Hey Joe” (Jimi Hendrix) which led to Joey remarking he used to get made fun of for playing it in school. Following Trapdoor, Joey called Cavs down to ask him when he played drums, to which he replied around 16. Ambrose then quoted Pleura after someone in the crowd mentioned Trump being convicted the day before. Sad Pilot was introduced as a song about being sad. Following Sad Pilot, Stu quoted Rattlesnake again. Sense contained You Can Be Your Sillouhette teases and a Witchcraft tease. This Thing contained an “Incredible” (M Beat) quote. The intro to Slow Jam 1 contained a The River tease and the song itself contained Ice V teases. Before Witchcraft, Stu told a story about a fan giving him a CD of acoustic songs from PetroDragonic Apocalypse and that inspired the band to play Witchcraft acoustic.

Opening Band(s): Grace Cummings