CD Reviews

Kula Shaker

Strangefolk | Cooking Vinyl

By TED DROZDOWSKI | January 14, 2008

3.0 Stars

Paisley drips from the notes these British neo-transcendentalists wring from the instruments on their third album, which ends a six-year hiatus. “Second Sight,” with its droning organ introduction, ragged guitar churn, and stacked vocal harmonies, and the loping folk tale “Hurricane Season,” which balances acoustic and electric guitars — and seagull calls — with Crispian Mills’s Dylan-on-microdot singing, straddle the colorful turf staked out by Pink Floyd’s 1967 Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Yes’s 1969 Yes. There’s much beauty here, but some sleek modernity, too, in the nagging, dirty punk growler “6FT Down Blues” and “Great Dictator of the Free World,” a jittery bitch slap at the evil heartless bastard in the Oval Office with the sing-along chorus “I’m a dic, a dic, a dictator of the free world.” Mostly, though, Kula Shaker keep busy on Strangefolk feeding the torch of psychedelic rock with musical kerosene.

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Music Reviews, More

| More

See more deals

view all

[ 02/19 ] 4-9 pm | Tom Tom Sunday: Celebrating the Big Beat of Tom Ardolino @ The Met

[ 02/19 ] Mary Poppins @ Providence Performing Arts Center

[ 02/19 ] "Nostalgia Machines" @ David Winton Bell Gallery

ARTICLES BY TED DROZDOWSKI

TOM HAMBRIDGE | BOOM! | August 23, 2011
Roots rock is the new country and ex-Bostonian Tom Hambridge is the style's current MPV.

COUNTRY STRONG | SOUNDTRACK | January 11, 2011
This steaming pile of songs is emblematic of the state of mainstream country music — all artifice, no heart, calculated anthems written to formula and meant, like the film itself, to do no more than capitalize on the genre's current success and rob its undiscriminating fans.

MARC RIBOT | SILENT MOVIES | November 02, 2010
This exceptional, eccentric guitarist has traced a slow evolution from screamer to dreamer.

IN MEMORIAM: SOLOMON BURKE, 1940 — 2010 | October 11, 2010

REVIEW: RONNIE EARL AND THE BROADCASTERS | SPREAD THE LOVE | September 07, 2010
Boston-based blues-guitar virtuoso Ronnie Earl seems to be considering his past on his 23rd album as a leader.