Those silly things you do when you're young...
Written: May 08 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Not as bad as I remember it being...
Cons: ... It's still a crock of sh*te!
The Bottom Line: Kula Shaker - B*stardising a culture near you soon! And they're cr*p...
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| Divine_Cheese's Full Review: K by Kula Shaker |
Of all the bands that went together under the label Britpop*, there was one which the British public is at great pains to forget. A band so bad that Gene looked down their noses at them. A band so crass that their lead singer proclaimed "I want to go on stage with a great big swastika waving behind me!" A band so dreadful that they make people look back fondly at Menswear. And that band is? Kula Shaker.
I actually bought this album back in 1998, at the tender, innocent age of 16, having been innocuously taken by the hit singles Hey Dude! and Hush, at the time Kula Shaker's biggest hits. I eagerly got the tape home and listened to the sounds coded within by little magnetic pin pricks, and soon discovered that "Pin Pricks" would be a better description of the band. Or maybe just pinheads. I subsequently gave it away to Oxfam, a sin which to this day I still regret, weighing up in my head whether or not giving away a Kula Shaker album for some hapless soul to buy is charity or a hate crime. It's probably charity as at least they won't waste ten quid on a brand new copy.
Fast forward a few years and here I am having borrowed said album from a friend after reappraisal of a couple of the tracks. After all, my tastes in music have changed radically throughout my life so far (From Beethoven, to the Beatles, to Blur and now Boards of Canada) and it could be that I'll have a similar revelation about Kula Shaker to the ones I had about Radiohead and Pulp. Regrettably, this is not to be so...
Kula Shaker's main gimmick is that they use heavy Eastern influences in their music, mixed with the occasional Sanskrit lyric and sitar instrumental. The fourth word in that sentence should alert you to the first problem with Kula Shaker - using a culture which they only have a transient knowledge of to sell music, on the basis that they're, like, really spiritual - i.e.: pillaging someone else's philosophy to try and seem cool. Did Kula Shaker enlighten people about the wonders of Hinduism and the Eastern philosophies? Were barriers broken between cultures and racism and prejudice eradicated forever? The answer is summed up by one of my classmates at school, when he said to a bunch of other kids, around the time Govinda was released, "Have you heard that new Kula Shaker song? It really takes the p*ss out of Indians..."
The trouble is, Kula Shaker were four Upper Class white boys, pretending they were hip, and so the public's perception was either that they were tw*ts or taking the p*ss, depending on how ignorant you were. Much like "finding" Buddhism is completely different to buying the Karma Sutra and turning vegetarian, their "enlightenment" to the ways of Eastern culture probably involved sitting on a beach in Goa, sh*t-faced** saying, "The stars they're like... so big... man" and then falling about in fits of giggles. In fact, Kula Shaker probably represent Eastern culture less validly than Alabama 3's classic, Ain't Goin' To Goa. The chances of anyone picking up a CD of traditional Indian music, or even an Asian Dub Foundation album (Traditional Indian music with drum 'n' bass beats and punk-rock guitars. Very talented, much under-appreciated), after listening to Kula Shaker were remote to minimal. If you don't believe they were a bunch of pretentious idiots, then we'd better skip over to exhibit B: the eternal space cadet himself, Crispian Mills.
As the son of renowned actress Hayley Mills and an English aristocrat, Crispian wasn't short of a few bob. Presumably at some point in his life, he visited India and, like, really discovered the Eastern philosophies man - so much better than our decadent Western ways! He probably said something along these lines to his bandmates as they sat in the Mills mansion smoking giant spliffs and checking the time on his Rolex as Mater and Pater returned in the Rolls from a shopping spree in Harrods. The whole swastika quote is the classic case of Mills missing the point entirely and proving what a nogpot he actually was - is Mills a flag waving neo-Nazi? No - he merely has a misled sense of his own importance, and how to make a grand statement to shock and change people's ideas - the swastika is an ancient symbol of peace and protection. As an upshot of his comment, Mills was branded as a total pr*t and the media got their soundbite for the perfunctory flirting with fascism accusations.
The final nail in the coffin of Kula Shaker is the actual album itself. The garish cover gives you an indication of what quasi-Eastern mysticism lies within - a mock up of traditional Hindu art, along with various, multi-cultured faces in blue, with the letter K, the name of the album in a large friendly letter. It promises mysticism, it promises Oriental romance and most of all, it promises to be cr*p. It stinks of a desperate, artsy, "Oh-look-at-enlightened-me" way of selling records. It's no surprise that K got fairly short shrift on Goodness Gracious Me, Britain's best-loved Asian comedy show. So now, let's get onto the music itself...
The more prescient of you will have noticed that I always define Britpop as inherently British sounding music. So how can an album that uses Eastern influences be Britpop? Well basically, because it sounds like a very bad traditional British album, which is why it's so appalling. There's no seamless melding of Eastern Bhangra beats with Western punk rage here, a la ADF (who, it should be pointed out, are British - therefore it ain't impossible). Kula Shaker were at their best (which ain't much) when they were playing pop songs influenced by the Beatles, the Faces and the Kinks. Kula Shaker in fact, want to be in the 60s, which is why they've plumped for pillaging the subcontinent, much like George Harrison did, only with more dubious motives and less musical ability.
Kula Shaker do have their moments, it has to be said, and easily the best of these is the wah-wah implosion of Hey Dude, the lead-off track and the most well known of the songs on here. This is Britpop par excellence and, tellingly, without a trace of Indian music, although it does have a certain hamfisted attempt at spirituality - the bridge section is actually pretty good, it must be said "Well if it feels like summer / You're catching the sun / and don't wait for the evening to fall / And if it tastes like honey / Don't swallow it all." It's a fairly simple summing up of the superficiality of our own world, set to a 70s rock influenced, hook heavy tune to die for. In fact, Hey Dude is the best example of the melding of two cultures here as Mills obviously does have respect for the ideas and ideals of Hinduism. It's just, as I pointed out, he's too keen to point it out over the rest of the album, and therein is the problem. Whatever the motives, this is summery pop of the sort that no longer exists after the coming of Ibizan trance.
Knights On The Town continues the theme of false hopes and how we should probably give up suffering, and the music is still great - there's even a hint of Eastern influence in it, and it actually segues properly into the framework of the song, rather than being a gimmick. A simple, grinding, rising guitar riff pushes things forwards along with Mills' hollering, several great solos and the ever present hammond organ. As a rocking blast of Britpop, the song succeeds on every level. Temple Of Everlasting Light is obviously meant to be your redemption from the sins of desire, and I guess it would be if it wasn't for what comes after it. Throughout much of the song the Eastern sounds really, really work and you can't help but sway in time to the music, supplied by light Indian beats and softly plucked, oriental guitars. Regrettably, towards the start of the song, there's a section where the whole band come in, and it grates incongruously with the predominant sound of the song, almost spoiling it. But this is good! You wait until you hear what's round the corner...
Sanskrit is quite a hard language to learn if you've spoken English your entire life - humans pick up the phonemes, the basic building blocks of words, at a very early age through listening to their parents and family talking. Sanskrit has very different phonemes to English, therefore it is hard, but not impossible, to learn quickly. If Govinda is anything to go by, Mills is a very fast learner! The actual use of a sacred language in a pop song is, if anything, ever so slightly... wrong? I mean, to actually use a sacred, spiritual form of communication, dating back thousands of years for a pop song, which will sell records to earn someone money, i.e.: earthly possessions, is a little bit patronising and very, very wrong indeed. To then take that ancient, sacred language, and apply it to what sounds like a soundclash between a rock concert and Diwali, is just plain evil. Govinda sounds like a ready-made Britpop anthem which someone has translated into Sanskrit and then tagged some traditional Indian instrumentation to for a good bit of "Ker-Ching factor". It is, to put it bluntly, appalling, and you can easily see why a teenage boy mistook it as a send up and why, from here on in, Kula Shaker lose the plot.
Magic Theatre and Hollow Man both suffer from the same problem as Govinda only the tune isn't even as catchy, so there's nothing even superficial to recommend them. Sleeping Jiva is a small, very traditional piece played on an instrument called a Sarod. It's quite an evocative piece, and I'm almost forgiving them until I realise... it's not the band playing it! It also feels out of place between the pseudo-mystic drone of Into The Deep and the mega-hit pop status of Tattva. Tattva is actually quite good, this time having Sanskrit over a pure piece of 60s retro-pop (hmm...) and it's fairly catchy and quite a sing-along for some kind of prayer (Which I'd assume it is). The verses and bridges are honed to perfection, but I still get the feeling they shouldn't be using Sanskrit to make pop music - it's just too much of a dichotomy for my liking. Still, I'll admit that I like Tattva.
After Tattva we get the Hendrix-wannabe of Grateful When You're Dead, a tribute to The Grateful Dead, and their late lead singer Jerry Garcia who is rather inappropriately remembered on Jerry Was There, the coda to the first song. Mills spoils one of the best tracks by chanting "Jerry was there" over some Bhangra beats like the space cadet he is. I think Crispian claims he saw Jerry in a trip or something, but one wonders why he feels he needs to share the revelation with us... 303 is next, a fairly substandard rocker about a main road in Southern Britain with cr*p lyrics: "Think I'll grow myself a big ol' hairy moustache." It's pretty painful. Start All Over is as near as Kula Shaker get to a traditional love song. It's pretty sweet actually, with a bit of yelping from Mills, and more of that sunny feel which made Hey Dude what it was.
The end result of K? A rather confused mix of music and cultures which leaves you wondering about the motives of the participants when they seem to use their interest in Eastern culture as something they can incorporate into their music as a plain gimmick. If Mills really "got" Eastern culture, he probably wouldn't have used it to make pop music, and would instead have taken a career in something a lot less superficial. Pop stars are often using Eastern culture as a fashion statement, and only REM and Radiohead have resisted using their interest in Buddhism, seen as "cool" by the glitterati, to sell a few records. I'm not saying Mills isn't genuinely intrigued by the East, but slapping it on a record (and a pretty shoddy one at that) as a fashion statement makes people question his motives.
Kula Shaker have since split up. I guess you could call that Karma.
Standout Tracks: Hey Dude, Knights On The Town, Tattva
*Quick definition: Britpop - a media generated "scene" which encompassed many mid-90s guitar bands with some kind of pride or heritage in traditionally British sounding music. Not just "Pop music from Britain, as many people believe. You'll p*ss people off if you accuse them of being Britpop!
** The evidence? "I got my stash and I love my hash," from 303. He was even blatant about being a space cadet who thought that the entire Hindu religion revolved around getting mashed on wacky weed. I should stress now, although I haven't studied Hinduism in much depth, I do know that this isn't the point at all. There are apparently some quite dodgy plants that grow by the River Ganges though...
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Divine_Cheese
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Member: Paul Lawston
Location: Up My Own Bottom
Reviews written: 63
Trusted by: 122 members
About Me:
Divine Cheese: Science Communicator by day, Evil Puppet Master By Night.
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