Contemplating A Pretend Jam Band Rivalry: Goose vs. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Lis Sinatra
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The jam-band scene historically has been as static as the music is fluid. Particularly at the top, where the same handful of groups have remained for decades: Phish, The Dead and their offshoots, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Umphrey’s McGee, and then the rest. Consider it a byproduct of perhaps the most loyal (and the most critical) constituency in all of popular music. To make it in this world, you must perform at a high level for a long time while withstanding the judgements of an obsessive, generous, cantankerous, smart and borderline psychotic audience.

It’s not easy. The jam scene is skeptical of hype, trendiness, and potential phonies. (It is, however, uniquely accepting of musicians who wear shorts on stage.) But in the 2020s, there’s been a class of rising stars who might one day play the arenas and stadiums currently populated by Phish and Dead & Company. Two of the biggest bands in this space are Goose and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. (There’s also Billy Strings, who I am mentioning here because whenever I bring up Goose or King Gizzard in relation to the current jam scene, at least one semi-testy individual will inevitably refer to the new king of jam-grass. But Billy Strings isn’t a “band,” he’s a solo artist with a band, I’m talking about bands here, is my inevitable reply. Of course, this semantic argument is never effective. Anyway: I am tabling the Billy Strings conversation for now, as I will be writing about him next week.)

Anyway: I am interested in both Goose and King Gizzard, and I am interested in Goose and King Gizzard in relation to one another. Because these are two very different bands, and they are good for very different reasons. The former is a quintet from Connecticut, and the latter is a sixpiece from Australia. The former is influenced Phish and aughts-era indie rock, and the latter is influenced by every popular genre of music since approximately 1968. The former has covered the Ghostbusters theme song live, and the latter once put out an album called PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. The former has been endorsed by Trey Anastasio, and the latter has been endorsed by Trey Anastasio. (Scratch that last one — differentiating jam bands with “endorsed by Trey Anastasio” is like differentiating people with “breathes oxygen.”)

If you are at all engaged with the jam-oriented sectors of social media — I understand if you’re not, especially if you value mental health — you have probably noticed these bands being pitted against each other. (Though these comparisons tend to go in one direction. More on that in a moment.) In that way, Goose and King Gizzard have become rivals. Which is not to say that Goose and King Gizzard are actually feuding — the only tangible smoke between them occurred in 2023 when two members of King Gizzard appeared on Tim Heidecker’s podcast Office Hours and claimed that Goose requested their own green room backstage at King Gizzard’s Red Rocks run. Apparently, this was a joke, which is a shame, as it would have been the most “jam band” event in the history of jam bands. (King Gizzard also invited the promising sorta-jammy indie band Geese to open their recent tour, which I wish was a troll of Goose but probably is not.)

As I have learned from studying this subject, rivals don’t have to be actually feuding — or have any kind of relationship — to be rivals. They just have to be perceived as having a binary relationship in the minds of fans. Like all worthy rivalries, Goose vs. King Gizzard resonates because they embody opposing ideas.

I want to write about this. Thankfully for me, I have an excuse. I saw both bands this month. And I saw them at the same 8,000-capacity venue. It was my first time seeing King Gizzard, and my fifth time seeing Goose. Though it was my first Goose experience after seeing King Gizzard, which by my math puts them on equal footing.

LET’S TALK ABOUT KING GIZZARD

The first point that must be made is that King Gizzard isn’t really a jam band. They are essentially garage-y prog rock group that sometimes decides to make an electronic record or a funk jam or an homage to sixties sunshine pop. On stage, they kind of resemble Queens Of The Stone Age if Josh Homme was more overtly influenced by Ween and Tool’s Lateralus. The longest number at the show I saw — “Hypertension,” also one of their best — clocked in at just under 20 minutes. But that’s just five minutes longer than the studio version. Another extended track, the mesmerizing synth tune “Theia,” ran for 12 minutes, almost exactly the midpoint between the three-and-a-half minute standard track and the nearly 21-minute “extended mix,” both contained on 2023’s The Silver Cord. Jam bands make short songs long, and prog bands just make long songs. King Gizzard fits in the second category.

King Gizzard also doesn’t follow the traditional “jam band” show structure established by the Dead and codified by Phish — two sets plus an intermission, with the first set being more “song” oriented and second set feeling spacier and more experimental. At a King Gizzard show, it’s just one solid block of music running for about two and a half hours, with no encore. And it’s all song-oriented. (To put this in perspective: Goose, who does follow the two-set blueprint, played 20 minutes longer despite performing seven fewer songs.) This can perhaps be attributed to cultural differences: As band members Joey Lucas and Lucas Harwood explained on Office Hours, there’s not a jam band scene in their country. It’s not the kind of status they pursued or even understand. “It’s crazy that people just follow us around for the whole tour,” Walker mused.

But even though King Gizzard doesn’t adhere to the formal definition of a jam band, they nevertheless feel like a jam band. And this is true for two reasons. No. 1, they have an absurdly dense mythos that recurs in lyrics and provides an arc to their voluminous discography. (Twenty-six albums in 15 years, though they might put out a new record by the end of this sentence.) The more time you spend listening to and thinking about King Gizzard, the better they sound. And that is basically the definition of jam-band music.

No. 2, King Gizzard’s live show has been a key ingredient to their success. Jam bands historically have built audiences by allowing fans to tape their shows, and then distribute them. (The honor system requires that tapes be shared for free, though in the vinyl and CD store era this code was frequently violated.) In recent years, Nugs.net and Bandcamp have been critical hubs for distributing video live streams and concert recordings (beyond the DIY tapers, of course). But on their recent tour, King Gizzard has gone one step further by posting live-streamed video of every show for free on YouTube and then allowing listeners to download a soundboard recording for a “name your price” fee on Bandcamp. For a band that improves with constant exposure, it’s never been easier to be constantly exposed to King Gizzard.

In my review of King Gizzard’s most recent LP, Flight b741, I dinged them for what I see as their biggest weakness — occasionally nondescript songwriting. For a band this prolific, and with virtually no fidelity to any particular style, this is hardly surprising. On their albums, they can come off as a “Jack of all trades, master of none”-type band. They try a lot of stuff, and some of it works and some of it doesn’t. As a result, the albums often don’t fully land.

On stage, however, this shortcoming is neutralized. Not only do they cherry-pick their best material, they also mix and match genre experiments to create a more well-rounded experience. (There’s also their infectious, puppy-dog energy, which comes through much stronger on stage than on record.) Even without the two-set structure, the show I saw felt like it had a satisfying flow and narrative to it. They opened with about an hour of blistering rock that sent the fans on the floor into fits of boisterous moshing. (Here, again, is another departure from jam-band convention — Phish or Dave Matthews don’t post warnings about mosh pit etiquette before their concerts.) After that, they drifted into a selection of electronic tunes from The Silver Cord that went on for almost a half hour. While the audience didn’t seem as engaged with this music, it was one of my favorite parts of the night, and the closest King Gizzard approximation to the “Drum/Space” portion of a Dead show. After that, the rock returned for the final hour.

My main takeaway was a mix of wonderment and appreciation that a band this unconventional and downright strange has caught as well as they have. As I walked out of the show I couldn’t make sense of it. But upon reflection King Gizzard seemed much broader than I initially believed. If I had to pin a specific genre on them, it would be “festival” music — like a good festival bill, they give you a little bit of everything. Some punk, some metal, some electronic music, and some crunchy boogie rock. It’s all there, all on the same stage.

Which is why, for all their strangeness, King Gizzard actually has more crossover potential than the typical jam band. I’m sure plenty of their fans aren’t even aware of King Gizzard being lumped into that scene. Lots of different people can fit under this tent, even those who reflexively recoil at the “jam band” tag.

LET’S TALK ABOUT GOOSE

When I first heard about Goose five years ago, what immediately impressed me was how impeccable their whole operation appeared to be. The way they played, their songwriting, how they presented themselves, the clearly defined personas of each member (“Zen” guitarist, “funny” second guitarist/keyboardist, “stoic” bassist, “nice guy” drummer) — they already seemed like a successful and popular band, even though they weren’t quite that yet.

But in the half-decade since, they have self-actualized themselves to the doorstep of arena-rock status. And they have done this methodically. I can’t think of another recent group where each time I have seen them in my area, it was at a different and progressively larger venue. Two years ago I saw them headline a club. Last year it was a theater. This year it was a large hall. Now, the neighborhood arena beckons.

Not that it has been a completely smooth ride. In the time since I last saw them, they replaced founding drummer Ben Atkind, who officially “departed” by choice though the move had some “not entirely consensual” vibes. He was replaced by Cotter Ellis, a more rambunctious player who joined second percussionist Jeff Arevalo and perpetually sunglasses-clad bassist Trevor Weekz in the rhythm section. But the power center of Goose remains the same: Guitarist Rick Mitarotonda is the main songwriter and musical focal point, and multi-instrumentalist and secondary composer Peter Anspach is the foil and de-facto frontman on stage.

As songwriters, Mitarotonda and Anspach have a traditional dichotomy that goes back to The Beatles — Mitarotonda is the “serious and spiritually minded” one, and Anspach is the “fun-loving and pop-leaning” guy. You can hear this dynamic play out on the really good live album out this month, Live At The Fox Theatre, which in typical jam-band fashion features several songs that haven’t come out yet on studio records, including Mitarotonda’s “A Western Sun” and Anspach’s “Red Bird,” which stand as some of Goose’s best numbers.

But for all of their differences, Mitarotonda and Anspach still arrive in the same place, which is valuing good pop-rock songs that work as well at three minutes as they do at 30. When I interviewed Goose for the first time in 2022, they were wary of the jam-band tag, in part because of the negative connotation (though I would argue that has lessened, even in the last two years), but also because they care about songs as much as jams. And that continues to be one of the best things about them (and a key to their success, even among jam-obsessed listeners).

On stage, they are remarkably consistent for a band in this scene. Goose can be great, or they can be merely good. But they are almost never terrible. This month’s show was the best I’ve seen them, in part because Ellis’ timekeeping gives the band greater dexterity and feel. But Goose also is good at zeroing in on the sorts of things that jam-bands do well — in essence, creating a hypnotic and danceable soundtrack that, like a good narcotic, makes your body and mind feel very good for about three hours — and executing it with maximum efficiency and professionalism. They sound like a band that was invented in a lab to create the perfect jam-band vibe.

And therein lies the paradox of Goose. This strength can also be viewed as a weakness. From what I can tell, this band attracts two kinds of haters. The first are middle-aged Phish fans who view Goose as poseurs (and also, I suspect, as a potential threat to Phish’s jam scene dominance). This is an easy group to disregard. As many others have observed, it’s the same dynamic Phish encountered 30 years ago from Deadheads. It comes off like rank haterism. (Also, Phish isn’t going anywhere, nor should they.)

The second group, however, I think has a point: Goose is not weird. They don’t look weird. They don’t sound weird. They don’t act weird. Moreover, there is nothing remotely dark or unsettling or “druggy” about their music. Like I said, Goose makes you feel good. They are inherently a “feel good” outfit. Which is only a problem if you want them to be more like The Dead (who dropped acid with Hell’s Angels and killed off four different keyboard players in progressively brutal fashion) or even Phish (whose “2.0” era from the early 2000s is sometimes thrilling but almost always depressing, particularly if you’re watching video of an alarmingly gaunt Trey).

But Goose isn’t like that. The darkest part of their history is parting ways with a drummer in publicly amicable fashion. Musically, they hew closer to John Mayer than Jerry Garcia. They’re a jam band for the Dead & Company generation, the people who came up at a time when this music was more mainstream and a lot less threatening. At the concert I saw, they covered Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” and it was precisely the sort of sincere and warm-hearted and vaguely uncool gesture you would expect from Goose.

Which brings up back to the pretend (but also real) rivalry between Goose and King Gizzard. There’s a certain perception I have noticed where Goose is positioned as the “safe establishment” jam band and King Gizzard as the “unsafe underground” jam band. It might not be articulated in exactly those terms, but any time I have brought up Goose in a public forum, someone (usually multiple people) will bring up King Gizzard as an antidote. And it only goes one way — if Goose fans are harping on King Gizzard, I haven’t seen it. (It’s possible King Gizzard isn’t popular enough yet to have haters).

Perhaps Goose vs. King Gizzard is a jam-band callback to the age-old “Beatles vs. Stones” binary, with Goose in the clean-cut role and King Gizzard as the bad boys. Whatever it is, the perception is there. That King Gizzard joked about Goose asking for their own green room tells me they’re aware of it, too.

Now, it’s possible that as a lover of musical rivalries, I’m seeing things that aren’t there. But I don’t think so. And just so I’m not accused of encouraging the binary, I’ll add this: I’m a fan of both bands. And I think they’re both more adventurous than 99.9 percent of rock groups working today. King Gizzard for their fearless genre experimentation, and Goose for their focused and expert improvisations. If they do exist on a binary, I would argue that they complement each other. And it’s good for this formerly static scene. There’s enough jams for everyone.