Live Review: The Drones, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

While getting used to seeing 'contemporary music' at the Opera House somehow The Drones – perhaps our most studiedly dishevelled band, Mike Noga's sportscoats aside – still strikes as a little incongruous.

If anything, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard just look awestruck with the surrounds. They ambled on, locked into a loose bluesy groove, and became that band you went to high school with that played never-ending lunchtime jams on The Doobie Brothers' China Grove. Their so many guitars, revving harmonica, double drums (with occasional Theremin!) of the seven-piece make a helluva racket. Beautifully odd.

But this is about The Drones, as they put their spin on the album recital format. Most of I Sea Seaweed presented in order, with regular interjections of familiar set pieces. Thus it's the title track, to How To See Through Fog, then punch through The Minotaur where you can see the whites of Gareth Liddiard's eyes as he screeched the 'Veni Vidi, Vici!' refrain like a man waking with the night terrors.

With a base of such visceral intensity, you wonder where they can take it. But each tweak to the band has added something. Dan Luscombe's guitar gave depth to Havilah, now Steve Hesketh's keyboards go from machine-gun piano on A Moat You Can Stand In to the dapples of 'LCD sunlight', as Liddiard stalks his old hometown via Streetview in Nine Eyes, the singer giving the magnificently Australian line “What kind of arsehole drives a lime green Commodore?” a poetry, a threat, a melancholy.

Their take on Kev Carmody's River Of Tears is definitive. Encores: the obligatory Shark Fin Blues, with all 'NaNaNa!'-ing along, and the final Why Write A Letter That You'll Never Send becoming a classic, the 'Send Email' button hit to tell the narrator's angers and desperations. As it echoes away, again realise you've seen one of the few bands that lives up to the claims often put on them.