Troy Kingi – Double Whammy, 5 September 2024: Review

Troy Kingi takes his brand new custom-made airmobile, album number 8 in the triple ten series, for its first public run.

Leatherman & the Mojave Green. Gonna take you for a ride in my Terraplane.

Thursday night at the frankensteined Double Whammy. Fridays show was sold out. We get to experience the show in intimate fashion. The big room is spartan now, after the opening shows.

With the lights out we could be in Buffalo Bill’s basement, as FBI agent Starling is finally confronting the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs.

This is all appropriate and certainly pre-ordained. Kingi is up to eight in the ten albums in ten genres in ten years.

Fulfilling his passion for Rock Music and the likes of Queens of the Stone Age (especially Songs for the Deaf), Kyuss, Eagles of Death Metal and further out.

He was suffering some inspiration burnout and got his mojo back in the desert of California.

Specifically, the legendary Rancho de la Luna recording studio in Joshua Tree, which has hosted so many great artists and their albums. Of course it is a mystical place of spirits, energy channels, extra-terrestrials.

The show starts with the same invocation as the album. Jeremiah the Blessed.

The invitation to bend over and part the butt cheeks may seem to be a joke. But it’s a similar premise to Ancient Evenings, one of Norman Mailer’s greatest books about the secrets of reincarnation in ancient Egypt. The same river of discovery in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness all the way to Apocalypse Now.

Tribal drums on the kick-off allow the guitars to field the ball cleanly with heavy riff power. Silicone Booby Trap and Ocelli.

Cactus Handshake takes that power-riffing into Sixties Rock psychedelia. I’m probably thinking of Jefferson Airplane around the time of Crown of Creation, and the guitar of Jorma Kaukonen. Zeppelin as well, more than Hendrix.

Kingi has the same band members who played on the album. Ezra Simons guitar and screaming vocals (Earth Tongue), Marika Hodgson bass, Treye Liu drums.

Speaking in Tongues is a cover of the Eagles of Death Metal song. Dirty fast-revving motorcycle music, stuttering vocals and appropriately brutal.

Similar in attack with Through the Night and Cash Flow.

Tribal Burundi drums open Lizards Are the Last. The guitars carry that momentum, with a hi-tone pause at the bridge. Lizards may be the last, after cockroaches and Keith Richard.

Geronimo is an old song that Kingi says he was able to finish in some desert caves when he came across thousand-year-old paintings on the walls. Some twang combined with the relentless engine room tempo and its sounds Psychobilly.

The song that has Simons screaming in Metal fashion is Momentary Lapse of Deflation, I am picking. Reminiscent of Wax Chattels in its liberating intensity.

Opening for Troy Kingi tonight is a Guitar & Drums duo called Ideas.

I have seen them once before.  They were on a four-band programme at Cassette 9 in June this year.

Described by the sound man as solid Rockers in the fashion of the White Stripes.

If anything, there are purer in their relentless thrash attack, and a good opening scene-setter for the main act.

This really does sound like Desert Rock, and under the maelstrom there is an underpinning of dirty Memphis Blues, some of which was recorded by Sam Phillips. Pat Hare as an example.

A song called Jack the Ripper has dissonant guitar like Bryan Gregory playing on the first Cramps album. That was recorded at the old Sun studio by Alex Chilton.

I don’t think it’s the old Link Wray instrumental unless it’s been thoroughly cannibalised.

The guitar sound of a big black truck barrelling through with relentless brutal riffs sound like Indian drone music after a while and is curiously relaxing and awakening.

You just need to open to it.

There is a fair amount of humour on the new Troy Kingi album.

Mezcal Eye Drop starts with a desert hombre declaiming, Ah got ma ‘Merican flag, ah got ma wooden cross. The guitars scream in unison and it’s wrenching and beautiful.

I would hazard a guess that it is political, and I would be 80% wrong, I imagine.

Some of the vocal’s sound like Dee Dee Ramones special brand of Punk Rap. (Remember Warthog?)

Kingi’s vocals open up as the show progresses. He’s good with the occasional falsetto.

He has got a wide octave range and that got me thinking that a part of the inspiration for this music would be coming from Captain Beefheart’s cult classic Tarotplane. A 25-minute jam found on the Mirror Man album.

A song called The Party Departed is quite a Magic Band type of title.

There are no lyrics provided on the album yet. It will take some time for the stories to reveal themselves.   

Last few songs have Southern bar band and jook joint Blues styles like Johnny Winter. The other Allman albino influence may also be present.

Troy Kingi unleashes the Leatherman & the Mojave Green beast with his premier show. It was great to be taken for a ride on this Terraplane, his mojo intact.

Rev. Orange Peel

Photography by Jennifer De Koning

Troy Kingi

Ideas