The Kula Wait Is Kula Over!

ALBUM: Strangefolk
ARTIST: Kula Shaker
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: ENGLAND

After months, nay YEARS of pining for a follow up to Kula Shaker’s Pigs, Peasants and Astronauts, the mighty Shaker have finally released Strangefolk. Expectations were high. It reminds me a little of the great ‘folk-rock revival’ scare back in 1999, when the Spin Doctors came out with ’Here Comes The Bride’, their homage to Mike and The Mechanics folk rock masterpiece, The Living Years. It was a disappointment to all us ’Spinheads’, and we had always hoped the band would stage a comeback. But it took over 6 years for the bearded nanny’s to create a follow up, and by then no one was listening. In the 7 years between Shaker albums their fan base has dwindled considerably, but those that remain are some serious strange folk indeed.
You may recall the famous Provo Utah Kula Kompound standoff of 2003, where five innocent Quaker Elders were massacred by the Shaker faithful in a ritualistic sacrifice marathon that lasted for 6 days, 6 hours and 6 minutes. The Devotees of The Shaker strapped the Quakers, one at a time, to a huge turntable device covered in plush green and orange shag carpeting, then spun them around and around to the strains of Sleeping Jiva. Once the Quakers were sufficiently discombobulated to the Shaker’s satisfaction, they would push them into the yard where they were viciously mauled and eaten by Mexican Hairless pigs.
The standoff went on for days before an enterprising young police rookie had the bright idea to blast Cat Stevens records until the cult surrendered, which they did. About halfway through Lady d’Arbanville, 10 of the cultists came out holding their ears, some bleeding profusely. The rest of the cult, it was reported, simply committed suicide at the chorus to Wild World.

What about the new album Uncle E, you ask? Is it any good?

Well, no actually. It’s total crap.

Come on, you didn’t actually think I was serious, did you? I mean, come on! “K” was good fun and all, but…

I think Britain’s own New Musical Express has summed up the new album better than I ever could, so let’s have a read, eh?

"It’s possible that no album has arrived at NME Towers on more of a hiding to nothing than ‘Strangefolk’. For younger readers, Kula Shaker were eminently punchable mid-’90s toffs with an irritating line in Indian spirituality-obsessed psychedelia, and, in Crispian Mills, the most instantly hateworthy frontman who ever lived. Depressingly, the vaguely impressive Verve-isms of opening track ‘Out On The Highway’ suggest we may be forced into the most unlikely critical coddling in music journalism history, but as soon as Mills indulges his inner hippy on ‘Second Sight’, the die is cast. The title track sounds like it is vocalised by the female speech function on a Mac’s TextEdit facility and is roughly the worst thing ever made, yet it’s still only the third-worst track on the album (‘Great Dictator (Of The Free World)’ and ‘Dr Kitt’, in case you’re wondering).

‘Strangefolk’? Shitberks."

‘nuff said?