Timing is everything in rock music. The fickle business of what\u2019s hip and what\u2019s not in popular music has long been an important factor in the success or failure of any band. Take Kula Shaker, for instance; 15 years from now they may well be regarded as a classic 90s band but as of 2007, a mere eight years after they split up, they are largely seen as yesterday\u2019s men and decidedly uncool ones at that. <\/p>\n
Of course, this is all largely irrelevant when considering the musical worth of the band\u2019s 2007 comeback album Strange Folk,<\/i> but still, it does mean that the chances of this album connecting with a larger audience outside of the Kula Shaker faithful must surely be small.<\/p>\n
The release of Strange Folk<\/i> follows the dissolution of front man Crispian Mills\u2019 interim band The Jeevas in 2005. While working on a charity album for the While this album certainly touches all of the musical bases that we\u2019ve come to expect from Kula Shaker — mysticism, psychedelia, Indian chants and vintage rock licks — there seems to be a distinct lack of fresh ideas from the band this time around. We\u2019ve heard Kula Shaker play all of these sonic trump cards before and play them much better. Unfortunately, the album\u2019s sound is not the only thing that has been rehashed on this record. Both \u201cGreat Dictator (Of The Free World)\u201d and \u201c6ft Down Blues\u201d have been released by the band before on their Revenge Of The King<\/i> EP, while \u201cSong Of Love\/Narayana\u201d originally appeared as a collaboration with The Prodigy on their Fat Of The Land<\/i> album way back in 1997. <\/p>\n Even the album title itself is a hand-me-down; \u2018Strange Folk\u2019 was both the working title of the band\u2019s Peasants, Pigs And Astronauts<\/i> album as well as being the title of a hidden track on their Kollected: The Best Of Kula Shaker<\/i> compilation album. With all of these regurgitated elements at play, it\u2019s hard not to hear the unwelcome sound of \u2018barrel scraping\u2019 permeating this album.<\/p>\n Another problem is that many of the songs here sound lackluster and uninspired, not bad but pedestrian and workmanlike. Is there any worse criticism for a rock band? There\u2019s a lack of any truly arresting moments like \u201cHey Dude\u201d or \u201cGovinda\u201d from their debut album or anything approaching the enchanting beauty of \u201cShower Your Love\u201d from their 1999 sophomore effort. <\/p>\n This is all the more frustrating because there are times on this album when Kula Shaker really does manage to approach the high standards set by its earlier work. \u201cSecond Sight,\u201d for example, is an uptempo rocker possessed of a sly, mercurial charm and \u201cOl\u2019 Jack Tar\u201d may be a slightly tongue-in-cheek ode to troubled sleep, but it\u2019s also blessed with one of the most exquisitely haunting vocal melodies Crispian Mills has ever written.<\/p>\n Strange Folk<\/i> isn\u2019t a terrible album by any means. It\u2019s just a rather disappointing one for those of us who know Kula Shaker are capable of so much more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":29113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8105],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-40633","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-kula-shaker","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40633"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}