When the Saturday lineup first dropped a few months ago, I was excited. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard among the absolute best and most relevant rock and roll acts on the planet. The rest of the undercard was strong. The headliner was a fun choice. It looked on paper like one of the best single days in years for a Shaky Knees lineup.
*Check out our SHAKY KNEES 2022: The Friday Edition – Day 1 Review here
*Check out our SHAKY KNEES 2022: Friday, Day 1 Photo Galleries here
*Check out our SHAKY KNEES 2022: Saturday, Day 2 Photo Galleries here
*Check out our SHAKY KNEES 2022: The Sunday Edition – Day 3 Review here
*Check out our SHAKY KNEES 2022: Sunday, Day 3 Photo Galleries here
*Check out our SHAKY KNEES 2022: From The Photog – Top 14 Sets here
The day delivered, kicking off with openers from Luxembourg-based Francis of Delirium on the Piedmont stage, and San Francisco 49er turned dream popper Exum on the Ponce de Leon stage.
But the true early standout of the daytime sets had to be the transfixing set from Dehd. The Chicago indie rock trio — Emily Kempf on bass and vocals, Jason Balla on guitars and supporting vocals and Eric McGrady on a standup drum machine – creates sounds that I would describe as existing at the intersection of No Doubt and the Black Lips.
They create the kinds of infectious, ethereal, jangly little hits that are good enough to be the lead track on your summer soundtrack. I honestly expect several Dehd tracks to wind up on my Spotify Rewind come January; “Loner”, “Flying” and “Bad Love” in particular have been working their way onto my playlists all summer. Check out their KEXP set to get where I’m at with Dehd, they are a 2022 favorite.
Other standout daytime performers included Djo, the current music project of actor Joe Keery, aka Steve Harrington on Stranger Things. A few years ago Keery announced he was leaving his former band Post Animals, and Djo is where he landed. With Djo, Keery churns out psychedelic little bedroom pop songs that, when they work, they work well.
I didn’t get a chance to see the band Reignwolf play, but shoutout to Jordan from Bahama Breeze in Kennesaw, who we met before the Kurt Vile show, and hung with the rest of the night. I love when people come to a festival by themselves because they are dead set to see their favorite band. That kid was half my age, but hung with our crew all night. We showed him the power of King Gizz, and Nine Inch Nails, and even slid him into our late-night set at the Masquerade. Good times.
But before all that: Molchat Doma. Look, I love Belarusian new wave post-punk as much as the next enthusiast, but wow. Here is a band pumping out those dark 80s synth layers in waves that time warp you back to some basement nightclub in Minsk circa 1984. When I listen to Molchat Doma, I feel like the wall is still up in Berlin, and somehow, we’re behind it.
As daytime gave way to the later sets, Kurt Vile & The Violators took to the Piedmont stage. Vile reminds me of Tom Petty, or Neil Young; a classic front man with an understated but swaggy demeanor, backed by a strong as hell band with an in-the-pocket sonic grind. His music sounds like that rock sound you hear emanating from a nearby stage, and so you turn to your friend and say, “who’s that?” And your friend says, “Kurt Vile.” To which you reply, “fuck yeah man he sounds great.” That’s Kurt Vile in a nutshell.
One stage away, some of the most legit punk rockers on earth — Amyl and the Sniffers — put on a set so raucous that lead singer Amy Taylor wound up literally bleeding from the face. And honestly, I’m not surprised.
Amyl is one of those bands with real, palpable energy. People were not going to miss that show, period. I think that’s because with Amyl and the Sniffers, that raw energy is totally legit. They aren’t faking it. It Isn’t bullshit. They are here to rock, and willing it leave it all on the table to get you moving. In a world with so many post-punk hybrids and so many quasi-punk pop rock acts, it’s refreshing to see real, gritty punk rock in 2022.
The set of the weekend though, belonged to Amyl’s Flightless Record labelmates, that pound for pound greatest band on the face of the earth in the year 2022, the absolute monsters of Australian psych rock, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
I last saw KGATLW at the Tabernacle, more than two years ago. At the time, they were touring on the Infest the Rats Nest metal album they’d recently dropped, and it attracted a lot of new fans to their ever-shifting brand of psych rock. Let me tell you: I have literally never, in all of my years and all of my travels, been to a show that got more turnt than that KGATLW show at the Tabernacle. It was like standing inside of a jet engine taking off for two and a half hours. It was absolutely an insane concert experience.
But that show was also three years ago. And KGATLW has since dropped like six other albums (nobody releases more music). And moved from two drummers to one. And dabbled on three consecutive studio albums in more jazzy microtonal stuff and then more mainstream pop productions. And had kids. And “made it big.”
So, if I’m being honest, my expectations were down a bit. Maybe, I thought, it would be a fun show from a great band, with a smattering of stuff from their catalog.
Nope. Full jet engine send: “Mars for the Rich”. “Planet B. Robot Stop”. “Gamma Knife”. Good new shit like “Dripping Tap”, “Gaia” and “Magenta Mountain”. It was everything you could’ve ever hoped for from a King Gizz set, and more. And in the end, it was a near unanimous winner in the informal poll of “best set from the weekend?”
Best band in the world, 2022. If you don’t know where to start with King Gizz: go here.
Phew lord, King Gizz was so good it was like an exhale, moving down to the Peachtree stage to see the iconic industrial legend Trent Reznor and his band Nine Inch Nails. The night had been building since the first notes of Molchat Doma, and you couldn’t ask for a harder hitting finale to drive the weekend to its high-water conclusion.
In total contrast to the typical headliner, NIN eschewed the typical “we’re here to bring you happy fun time.” No bright lights. No coordinated fireworks. No big smiles.
In their place: a total blackout. The screens on stage left and right: hazy, half blacked out blurs of light and movement. The band: shadowy figures inside a cloud of smoke and light. The stage: utterly engulfed in smoke, strobes pulsing aggressively as industrial hit after hit churned out from the darkness. It was honestly cool as shit. NIN goes hard, and it’s clear from the get.
And they killed it. Killed it on the hits. Killed those deeper cuts that set Trent Reznor apart as a visionary, and a music producer ahead of his time. Killed it on that Bowie cover. And then, draped in the same throbbing, smoky darkness that brought them in, they were gone.
Check out more photos from Shaky Knees Music Festival 2022 – Day 2 on Saturday, April 30th, 2022 below. All photos by Mike Gerry
