ALBUM: Kula Shaker – Strangefolk

Some bands make themselves easy targets for music hack brutality. It’s easy to take an instant dislike to them and to disparage their every note, especially when the band consists of rather posh boys who are quick to offer up a controversial quote or ten. And it’s on to the next victims when the band split. News of a reform and a new release is enough to get the knives sharpening in anticipation.

So after seven years it’s a cautious welcome back for Kula Shaker. And the opening track of their third album, Strangefolk, is as inoffensive as they come. It’s smooth, it’s a bit rock-lite and it’s the sound of a band who have matured over the intervening years. So far, so run-of-the-mill. Okay, so the following track, Second Sight, finds them ploughing more familiar 60s rock influenced furrows and sounds not unlike a male-led Jefferson Airplane with a bit of a Far Eastern fetish. In fact, it sounds like vintage Kula Shaker.

But there’s a bit more going on, with attacks on Blair and the Iraq war and a less-than-flattering song written from the point of view of George Bush “I’m a dick – dick – dictator”. After the title track, which features a kind of a fairytale told in a distorted, robotic voice, there’s a bit of a dip in the middle, where there’s little that really leaps out at the listener. But further on there’s also a song that deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which builds and builds in a swirl of sound and then gently recedes and 6ft Down Blues, a swampy, thudding effort that’s worth returning to.

The final song might just be an 80s cultural reference too far for the younger listener, who may well never have heard of a CB operator, let alone a super one, but there’s some great lyrics: “I’m all alone at home sat talking on the phone to a girl who looks like she should be chewing a bone.” And it’s little touches like that which might just make it worth renewing an acquaintance with Mr Mills and Co.

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