When Crispian Mills characterizes the evolution of the songs that comprise Kula Shaker’s new album, Strange Folk, as “gradual,” he may be understating the case just a bit. For the newly reformed Kulas, it’s been over a decade since the quartet took England by storm in 1996 with their debut album K and the Eastern psychedelia of its hugely successful singles “Tattva” and “Govinda.” Two years later saw the release of the Kulas’ largely acclaimed but commercially mediocre sophomore album, Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, and there the Kula Shaker recorded legacy stopped. In August 1999, the Kulas played a number of auspicious gigs, including Glastonbury and the Lizard Festival, which was scheduled to intersect with that year’s total solar eclipse. The following month, Mills announced the end of the Kulas on the band’s web site.
Of course, Mills and the rest of the band weren’t idle in the post-Kula years. In 2000, Mills began a solo project which ultimately morphed into the Jeevas, a trio that also relied on the ’60s for inspiration but drew less of it from the psychedelic and Eastern aspects of the decade (and from Mills’ own spiritual conversion after a backpacking trip through India just prior to the formation of Kula Shaker) and more from the elemental pop forces that defined the era. The Jeevas’ two albums, 1234 and Cowboys and Indians, was energetic pop and did moderately well commercially. Bassist Alonza Bevan (who had been with Johnny Marr and the Healers) and drummer Paul Winter-Hart (who had played with Thirteen: 13 and Aqualung) formed the group Shep which toured and released a handful of tracks through their web site while keyboardist Jay Darlington joined Oasis as a touring member.
“The Jeevas was great fun for just three-piece rock and roll,” says Mills. “But everybody kind of had their own experience. Alonza played with Johnny Marr and Paul was playing with other bands. It was good. Everybody went and had different experiences and learned new things and when we came back together again, everybody had their own new ingredients to throw in.”
Although the gap between albums has been long, Kula Shaker has actually been back in action for nearly four years. Five years after the official end of the band, Mills approached Winter-Hart and bassist Bevan with the prospect of resurrecting the Kulas, at least on a provisional basis. The first step for the rejuvenated Kulas was getting together to record a new track for a charity album that Mills organized for California‘s School of Braja, whose curriculum includes teachings about Krishna and Indian music, subjects close to Mills’ spiritual heart. Mills slotted a pair of tracks from the Jeevas, then contacted Bevan about the possibility of reviving Kula Shaker for a one-off track on the album.
“We weren’t really thinking about anything more than that,” says Mills. “But we had a really good experience doing it and it was a natural thing to keep going, everybody had such good fun. We got a feeling that the band hadn’t ever really reached its potential and we felt like the best was yet to come and we should go back at it again.”
With the success of the 2004 sessions that produced the track “Braj Mandala” for the School of Braja benefit album, the Kulas firmed up plans to make their reformation permanent. After Darlington decided to forego the reunion, the band reunited as a trio (new keyboardist Harry Broadbent came aboard in 2006) and embarked on a course that runs counter to the standard music industry blueprint.
“We made the decision that we all wanted to get back in the saddle,” says Mills. “So rather than write and record an album, we thought we’d start touring first in Britain and just advertise on the internet - that’s the way people heard about it - and so we were trying out ideas in public. The stuff was really working right, and after about nine months of that, we went into the studio.”
The process that shaped Strange Folk, the first album of new Kula Shaker material in nine years, was actually the same process that forged the material on K in the mid-’90s. “Our first record was really recorded after having worked as a band live for a long time,” notes Mills. “[Strange Folk] is a very a live record, a lot of it is very live.”
Mills sees a lot of similarity between the Kulas’ first two albums at the end of the last century and their first album of the new millennium. If there’s a shift, he believes it comes in the form of external perception. “It’s definitely got the Kula Shaker sound and a lot of the inspirations from the original albums are there, but I think it’s the world that’s changed,” says Mills. “It’s a different atmosphere. It’s kind of the post-9/11 Kula Shaker.”
The sonic Indian influence that dominates K and Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts is largely diminished on Strange Folk, but Mills doesn’t see that as a conscious decision to steer away from it, but rather a natural outgrowth of the immediacy of the material’s evolution. “I think because a lot of it was developed live, the core of the record is a rock and roll band,” says Mills. “The Indian mystical stuff, so much of the influence from that side of things, has to do with ideas as well, ideas that don’t necessarily have to have a sitar to be expressed. I love the sound of sitar and tablas, but sometimes ideas are even more potent than a sound. There are a couple of Indian meltdowns on the record; ‘Song of Love’ is a mantra, and there are a few sounds, but it’s a little more subtle. Maybe some of those sounds will kind of seep back in on the next record, but I think the band really built its reputation by playing live so that’s really what we were trying to capture.”
Although Mills doesn’t feel as though he has abandoned any of his core influences, he admits that he expanded his sonic palette during the five years that he was working outside of Kula Shaker’s original context. That expansion is a major component of Strange Folk. “We were always obsessed with the golden period of British rock and roll, that mid - to late ’60s period, absolutely,” says Mills. “But during our sort of lost weekend, I certainly rediscovered American rock and roll, people like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, definitely, and I think I assimilated a bit more of their approach and that’s probably the biggest influence since K.”
Mills also points to a change in the way that he considers lyrics as being another part of the subtle shift inherent in Strange Folk and the newly refurbished Kula Shaker. “I think that lyric writing is obviously a pretty personal thing and sometimes you want to play around with imagery and word jugglery and abstract ideas,” says Mills. “But I think sometimes there’s a call for being a bit more direct and blunt. Say what you mean and mean what you say, as the saying goes. There are some tracks like ‘Fool That I Am’ that are quite romantic and others like ‘Great Dictator’ that are just fun and in your face. There’s quite a mix.”
--Brian Baker
Kula Shaker’s Strange Folk is released February 19, 2008 on Cooking Vinyl Records.
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