Kula Shaker – Pilgrim's Progress

Revisiting an old album can be a funny experience, a bit like watching a film you loved as a kid in adulthood and realizing that Pete’s Dragon doesn’t actually look as lifelike as you remembered. The adult me sometimes get’s confused as to what the teenage Simon Rueben saw in some albums (EMF’s Schubert Dip, loved it, WHY?), and so listening again to albums you loved when in the blush of youth is not something you should do lightly.

But at the time of its release, I loved Kula Shaker’s debut album K. And for the purposes of this review, I listened to it again for the first time in a decade and whaddya know – it’s still really good. Sure, some of the mystical stuff is a little annoying. ‘Tattva’ would sound better if the lyrics didn’t come across as a recipe for biryani. But these are minor quibbles. It is a powerful, ambitious album, and I don’t think it (or they for that matter) deserve the stick they received at the time. Sure, they came across as overly privileged, and somewhat smug, but it has a distinct tone and an originality to it that sets it apart from other albums of that period.

And my goodness, I am sure many readers had to rub their eyes and do a double take when they saw that they are still going. This is their fourth release after a hiatus between albums two and three, now on their own label and even their own recording studio. Recording took place in Belgium, tucked away in the Ardennes forests, the surroundings seeping into the music, which is not as bombastic as their debut release all those years ago. There are still though flashes of psychedelica, ‘Modern Blues’ swaggering in with beads flying and laughable lyrics, and ‘Figure It Out’ as close to ‘Govinda’ as you are going to get.

The album is at its best in its more pastoral moments, particularly the lazy strum of ‘Only Love’ and ‘To Wait Till I Come’, full of child like melodies, distant wails and treated vocals. There are also songs that swagger as if on horseback, ‘All Dressed Up’ cantering along into ‘Cavalry’. The album has two slabs of noise as its bookends, from the shuddering cellos of the annoying ‘Peter Pan R.I.P.’ to the suitably bonkers ‘Winter’s Call’ where they really let rip. This album is at best adequate, not a thundering success nor a resounding failure. It seems somewhat restrained at times, lacking the passion and power they possessed on their debut. It’s not until the final track that they really pull out all the stops, with most that came before trying to hard to be enchanting rather than entertaining.