THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Kula Shaker’s new album Natural Magick finds the band harnessing the power to cast their most potent spell yet, incorporating blazing psychedelic sermons, raga rave-ups, stardust-coated pop pearls and mood-enhancing mantras. “This chapter in the band’s life is very much driven by live energy and that spiritual connection with the audiences which comes with it. We all agreed that the songs should be no longer than three minutes. There are no epics,” says Crispian Mills.
Reformed permanently in 2021 due to the return of keyboard wizard Jay Darlington, reuniting all four members of the band’s classic lineup for the first time since 1999. The band became U.K. chart-toppers with 1996’s debut album K; ’99’s followup Peasants Pigs and Astronauts saw them push the creative envelope prior to their premature dissolution. Having made a welcome return in 2007 with the self-funded Strangefolk, Kula Shaker have built towards the sonic summit.
The band’s seventh studio album, Natural Magick finds the original four members — Mills on guitar/vocals; Darlington on organ and keys; Alonza Bevan on bass; Paul Winter-Hart on drums — delivering the wild energy that we know and love, while creating a technicolor sonic pathway towards a more enlightened state of mind. There is kinetic energy coursing through every second of Natural Magick that is planted firmly in the rolling 24-hour news-feed mind-mash that is today’s Planet Earth.
“This chapter in the band’s life is very much driven by live energy and that spiritual connection with the audiences which comes with it,” explains Mills of the band’s approach to the sound of the album. “We all agreed to make this album a Kula Shaker fan’s dream. It was very similar to the way we recorded K, back when we only had half an hour to blow people away, and recording much of it in between shows while touring.”
“It was one of those fortuitous moments of synchronicity,” says Crispian, “When we first reformed in 2007, Jay was still in Oasis, but at the end of last year the intertwining paths of fate brought us back together. Also, around the same time, our original management team of Kev Nixon (who also co-produced the album with Crispian and Alonza) and Sarah Clayman took over again and so we’ve got the whole crew back together from when we made (multi-platinum-selling debut album) K. There’s an excitement and momentum you feed off in these situations. Two days after Jay did his first official gig back with us at Shepherd’s Bush Empire last December, we were in the studio recording new songs.”
From the amp-crackle which ushers in blistering opener Gaslighting — which riffs on the lyrical theme of Gil Scott-Heron’s 1971 classic The Revolution Will Not Be Televised with lyrics like “The revolution will not be live-streamed across all social-media platforms / You will receive no notifications, only dehypnotisations, revelations and realisations”) — it’s clear this is a band once again firing on all cylinders.
The pulsating first single Waves is a hymn to the communal euphoria of their never-better live shows. Next comes the infectious Indian Record Player, with its finger-clicking homage to Bollywood icons R.D. Burman and Asha Parekh (among others), its wild fun setting the pulse racing, and along with Chura Liya (You Stole My Heart), there’s a nod to Mill’s love of vintage Indian cinema. But it’s the dazzling title track which sees the emotional needle hurtling into the red in a distillation of every klassic Kula moment to date.
Powerful personal and philosophical currents swirl within these groovy meditations, while the heartstrings are tugged on the sublime back-porch country-honk of Stay With Me Tonight, featuring female vocalist Alanoud Gigante. The need to reject government-sponsored dogma is addressed in Something Dangerous, a Bob Dylanesque ode to the joys of (mild) disorientation and the freedom that comes from questioning the status quo, while the central disconnect between rulers and ruled is explored fully in the driving Idontwannapaymytaxes and it’s sibling F-Bombs.
Without doubt, the hidden gem of this collection of winners is the Hare Krishna-inspired Happy Birthday — a singalong of Govinda-style proportions. The haunting, Tarantinoesque landscape of Whistle And I Will Come, whose title alludes to 1961 cine-classic Whistle Down The Wind (which starred Crispian’s mum Hayley Mills, of course). There is a darker hue to the escapist Kalifornia Blues, and the twinkling finale of Give Me Tomorrow, surely a classic in the making, will have even the most hardened cynic swearing they’ve got something in their eye.
Maintaining a sense of humour in the face of such provocation has, of course, been part of Kula Shaker’s armoury since the release of puntastic debut hit Grateful When You’re Dead / Jerry Was There back in 1996. But then, what else would you expect from a group who named themselves after a ninth-century mystic and breached the Top 5 twice in the same year with Hey Dude and Tattva, a song written in Sanskrit, only to be followed by another, the majestic global message of Govinda.
Natural Magick comes after the shortest gap between Kula Shaker albums, recalling the music business of the 1960s, when two albums per year was the norm. As Crispian concludes, “It’s all part of our ever-evolving mission to spread the gospel of peace, love and understanding. Sure, you can look at the world and say it’s run by sickos, but I’m an optimist. Love is the source of all spiritual power, and the bands I love always connect me to something more than the music; I like to think of us as a ‘gateway’ to a happier, more spiritual reality.”
