REVIEW: Kula Shaker, Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts (Columbia)
- Scott Slonaker
It seems that every new band these days needs some sort of gimmick to get noticed these days, and back in 1996, Kula Shaker rode theirs, the Sanskrit-nonsense-chant-and-Beatles-pastiche "Tattva", onto American modern rock radio. The band's debut album, K, proved to be entertaining enough, and with legendary (Pink Floyd, Kiss, Peter Gabriel) producer Bob Ezrin at the helm, Crispian Mills and Co. have followed up with Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts.
British bands, in general, seem to be more interested in one-upping themselves "artistically" than the more American tradition of following the formula and giving people what they want unless forced otherwise (blame Berry Gordy?). Kula Shaker fit squarely into their home country's aesthetic; to say this new album is a tad ambitious is an understatement. Peasants is a truly scrumptious palette sonically, evoking almost every single major Woodstock act (except maybe Sha Na Na...no, wait a second) at some point. Lyrically, however, the record's squarely in the Oasis camp-how a word or phrase sounds is much more important than what it says. "You're a wizard in a blizzard of mystical machine gun" is not exactly Elvis Costello.
The opener, "Great Hosannah", builds slowly over six minutes to a gospel-like crescendo of female backing singers and pulsating organ. Massed vocals on "Mystical Machine Gun" and "108 Battles" call to mind none so much as an amped-up Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. "Shower Your Love" eschews rock thunder for the White Album's glossier pop contours. (One of the refrain lines, if I'm hearing it correctly, is "I'm not even half the way there/ I'm just a stupid dickhead".)
"Radhe Radhe" sounds like it was dropped in from another genre entirely - a tribal rhythm sung by a female singer, colliding with a brass band that just happens to be marching by. Right afterwards, frontman Mills drops in the brief acoustic interlude "I'm Still Here" in an attempt to reassert the humanity lost in the monster-movie splatter of influences around it. Perhaps the best overall track is "Sound of Drums", which is a relatively straightforward stomp highlighted by a great garage-rock organ line (in other words, kinda like their bang-up cover of Deep Purple's cover of Joe South's "Hush" on the I Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack). Oh, and lest we forget, Mills does lapse back into Sanskrit at the end of the record- give thanks for that trusty "program" button on the CD player.
Peasants is aural candy of the highest order- varied and richly textured. But don't expect Lennonite parables or Jagger-Richards hard-knock-life anthems- sometimes, the riffs you take are equal to the riffs you make.
