SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY this track crossed my desk and ears. I’ve never really known what to make of Kula Shaker. I think I heard their cover of “Hush” here and there when it came out way back when, and I had a promo copy of 1999’s Peasants, Pigs, and Astronauts that was in heavy rotation in my car when I was about 20 years old. These were the Britpop days, and Kula Shaker is an unmistakeably British band, with their raga influences about as ubiquitous as a curry shop in East Anglia. So in a way, they are eternally linked to Oasis and Blur, even if they sound nothing like them. They arose during a creative, memorable period in British music.
Those were also the grim Radiohead days, the “Karma Police” days. For me, Peasants, Pigs, and Astronauts was a reprieve from all that seriousness and foreboding. It’s linked in my mind with the first Austin Powers film, and I do think some fembots make an appearance in the “Mystical Machine Gun” video. They were a fun band and the lyrics were just a part of the vibe. That’s nice that guitarist and singer Crispian Mills had something spiritual to say, but after could he please play that tasty guitar part again? In a way, they were a nice follow-on to Primal Scream in the “Rocks” era. Badly needed groove music penetrating the merciless Thom Yorkean gloom.
My understanding is that Crispian caught some flack for being what we would call a nepo baby because his mother was in The Parent Trap (and I am old enough to have seen the original without having to look it up). For me, this only helped sell the band more. What better fate for the son of Hayley Mills than to become a psychedelic bard? While his name recalled Henry V’s speech at Agincourt, the rest of the band — Jay Darlington (organ), Alonza Bevan (bass), and Paul Winter-Hart (percussion) sounded like characters from an Evelyn Waugh novel. There was very little not to like about this group, and yet they remained a kind of cultural outlier.
Which brings me to this track, “Charge of the Light Brigade,” the third on their new album Wormslayer, released at the end of January. The production is thick, dense, yet shimmering, lively. The sound comes up at you from every angle. The changes are addictive and insistent and the lyrics are a shade darker. “They were all drinking blood in the shadows / drinking your blood and draining away / don’t turn your back on the shadows” in the verse and “they’re breaking the law / these masters of war / they come from behind / they don’t knock at the door” in the refrain. This ain’t, “You’re a wizard in a blizzard of mystical machine gun.” This is serious stuff. The band sounds great. The drums are spare, the bass is buoyant, flawless. The organ holds everything together in a warm glow. Mills is an underappreciated guitar player too. Naturally, the video is recorded in an old castle or church of some kind, maybe that one on the cover of Temples’ Sun Structures. Maybe all the psychedelic cats hang out there?
Some friends of mine are not sold on the Kula Shaker renaissance. They are skeptical of the band’s output. But with a song like this, it’s just impossible to argue that it’s not good, because it is. It’s just a good song. The best part is this: there is no self-indulgent solo. This song’s tight. Three minutes and five seconds and they’ve said what they’ve come to say and they’re done.
north! 