Kula Shaker Back Together
Saturday, April 1, 2006 at 9:57AM 3 Comments Kula Shaker, the eastern-tinged phychedelic rock outfit named for a 9th-century Indian king and featuring Crispian Mills (son of Hayley Mills) is back together after disbanding in 1999.
Kula's debut K dominated my CD player in the summer of 1997. "Tattva" and "Govinda" (which, according to Wikipedia, is a cover of Radhe Krishna Temple's "Govindam," and is the only UK top ten ever sung completely in Sanskrit!) were the standout tracks. The album basically had three modes - melodic rock with Indian elements ("Tattva"), space jam-rock ("Jerry Was There"), and quite heavy driving guitar tracks ("303"). The eastern spiritualism thing was kinda hokey but also totally cool.
Their 1999 album Peasants, Pigs, & Astronauts had a creepy cover. I listened to the whole thing maybe twice, and fell in love with the Beatlesque "Start All Over" and nothing else. Other than an excellent cover of Deep Purple's "Hush" on the soundtrack to I Know What You Did Last Summer (which also featured Southern Culture on the Skids and a blistering cover of "Hey Bulldog" by Toad the Wet Sprocket) and the requisite Kollected: Best Of (see! it's got a K instead of a C! HA!) that seemed to be it for Kula Shaker. The guitarist joined Johnny Marr and the Healers.
So it was pretty shocking to me when I searched for them in the iTunes Music Store today and turned up an EP, Revenge of the King, released in 2006. And it sounds pretty good. The reconstituted Kula is without master keyboardist Jay Darlington, who now tours with Oasis. From the 30-second iTunes clips, "Troubadour" sounds like a winner. And supposedly there's a complete album to come.
The band has a nice new Web site, a suitably horrible MySpace page, and is gigging in the UK and Japan. It will be interesting to see how this new material is received. I'm glad to see them back. It's always sad when a band has a monster debut, a lackluster follow-up, and flames out. This is a band that had more to say. Now they're finally getting back to business.
Reader Comments (3)
Hey,
the myspace blog has a nice purpley feel to it now!
Kx
That's much better! I don't know what it is about MySpace, but it makes it feel like 1995 all over again as far as Web design. It's cute.
yeah...i thought the orange background had to go...was a bit too 1996!
K