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.

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