Product Description

After creating a stir with their debut album K, Kula Shakerfollows up with a purposeful upping of the ante on PEASANTS. Like its predecessor, the album brashly melds the cinematic, spacy Britrock sweep of Spiritualised with Middle Easternmelodic touches (the mid-period Beatles are strongly evoked, especially on the flower power epic "Shower Your Love") and the occasional loop-oriented trip-hop touch. The strongestemotional connection for Kula Shaker seems to be with the '60s--heavy organ, choral vocals, Yardbirdsy guitar and harp,it seems like the quartet has learned every trick in the post-'65 rock & roll book and filtered through a harder-edged '90s Britpop orientation. PEASANTS is an ambitious, broad-ranging album, drunk on the driftwood of pop culture and creative enough to make something new of it.

Track Listing

1. Great Hosannah
2. SOS
3. Mystical Machine Gun
4. Radhe Radhe
5. I'm Still Here
6. Shower Your Love
7. 108 Battles
8. Sound Of Drums
9. Timeworn
10. Last Farewell
11. Golden Avatar
12. Namami Nanda Nandana

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6909 in Music
• Released on: 2001-12-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Customer Reviews

The continuing Psychedelic Revival
There's no doubt that the U K produces more interesting music than the States-who manage to come up with grunge and death metal-or some of those bores who end up on Later
In the 90s we had Jesus Jones,the Family Cat and-Kula Shaker
Kula Shaker were into their own thing straight away-influenced by the Beatles,Yardbirds and Dylan for starters.
Anyone who never heard Kula Shaker should think George Harrison for a reference point

Shower your love
Kula Shaker is a big of an oddity -- a 1990s band (recently reformed) that sounds like a classic psychedelic/Indian funk band from the sixties or seventies.

And their second album "Peasants Pigs and Astronauts is a seriously underrated little Britpop album, full of rich atmosphere, brilliant instrumentation, and a thick opulant blanket of Indian musical influence. Where else in modern music do you hear Sanskrit chants with blazing riffs?

It opens on a spacey, shimmering note, before seguing into the funky, catchy, wild "Great Hosannah." It's a surprisingly stirring song calling for all people to join together, because, Crispin Mills asks us a bit uncertainly, "Will we arise in our time/At the dawn of another meaning/Will we awake at the break of a great hosannah?"

It's followed by the sinuous, swirling rocker with a great name "Mystical Machine Gun." Then they follow it up with a slew of solid rock'n'roll, flavoured with a heavy Indian vibe -- psychedelic blues, roof-raising rockers, bouncy Doors-like pop with samples of thunder, soft acoustic ballads, and little yowling songs that cycle gently in chiming, colourful circles.

It came as a shock to me to learn that Kula Shaker (named after an Indian holy man, Kulasekhara) only formed in the mid 1990s. Listening to their sound and their socially critical lyrics, I thought they were a product of the sixties or seventies, whose music had stayed timeless.

But as I listened to it more, it became clear that this music was a more modern type. It has deliciously barbed, jagged riffs paired with cycling, ethereal guitars, even in mellow love songs like "Shower Your Love." And it's laced with bells, funky horns, eerie flutes, smashing drums, rippling retro keyboard and spacey synth. It's all woven tightly together, into pop songs with a dozen layers of sound. But they also do something a bit more recent, slipping in delicate samples of church bells, singing birds, and a weird little voice.

Crispian Mills has that retro flavour as well -- he pours his heart into his rough-sounding vocals, as he belts out everything from neo-psychedelic weirdness ("You're a wizard in a blizzard/A mystical machine gun") to tender love songs ("Shower your love on me/Don't make it so hard to cry"), and a few awkwardly phrased calls for revolution ("Well, I laugh and catch the sun/'cause it's gonna be revolution for fun").

The newly reformed Kula Shaker mishmash retro instrumentation, Indian funk and blazing rock'n'roll together in their second album, an underrated little Britpop gem.

Why break up when you are making music like this...?
An album with a beginning a middle and an end. Even the shorter songs stand out like 'Last Farewell'.

The start is epic, 'Great Hossanah' come in with excellent build up that wants to make you stand up and play your air guitar. It then blends into SOS seamlessly...

Infact, I should say the whole album blends really well...

'Mystical Machine Gun' as the track of the album, good guitar and ok lyrics, against 'Great Hossanah' and if i'm in the mood 'Time Worm' is a Psycadelic delight.

What does it sound like, A cross between Pink Floyd song writing skills, an Indian restaurants background music and The Who guitar energy? Does that make sense...

Why did they have to break up?