24th June 1996. England was bracing itself for the European Championship semi-final against the mighty Germany at Wembley. Everyone had learned the words to ‘Three Lions’. Everyone. No one was expecting or asking for a rock song with a chorus entirely in Sanskrit. While shopkeepers and punters panicked at the dwindling supplies of Fosters and Becks, Kula Shaker were releasing ‘Tattva’, confident in the knowledge that minds were on other things. Later in the summer of ’96, we asked, “What does ‘acintya bheda bheda Tattva’ actually mean?” “Why didn’t Gazza score?” “What’s the interweb?” Never such innocence again.
First up on the band’s eight studio album Wormslayer is ‘Lucky Number’, which begins with pretend overheard twanging and noodling mixed with excitable yet indiscernible chatter in the mode of The Beatles – the actual song is a ‘Chelsea Dagger’-like thigh slapper, albeit with a swirly 60s texture. On ‘Good Money’, Crispin Mills claims, “You and me are free to choose our own reality,” which is *almost* justification for using AI to create the video. The track is a sarcastic funk-ridden ode to artistic exploitation, with Mills at one point sounding like a terrifying blend of Lennon and Fagin.
‘Charge Of The Light Brigade’ rumbles along more in the manner of a Victorian poetry reading than wartime slaughter. “Send in the cavalry” is normally said with an exclamation mark. “I’m flying like a comet straight back into your arms,” Mills sings on the Roy Orbison-tinged ‘Little Darling’. If David Lynch was still with us, he would surely have considered using the track as the backdrop to some horrifically ambiguous scene of domestic unease. The sinister arpeggios and organ at the start of ‘Broke As Folk’ could have come straight from a 70s horror movie. The track then becomes a lively tribute to ‘Riders on the Storm’, with Jay Darlington yet again making us grateful for Ray Manzarek.
‘Be Merciful’ is a game of two halves: Johnny Cash-like desert reflection and the sort of choir-laden, guitar-squalling ecstasy that Bernard Butler does so brilliantly. ‘Shaunie’ references ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ and has the giddy carefree air of wandering around an Irish lough or a free festival with daisies attached to your temples. It would be lazy but also quite a compliment to say that ‘The Winged Boy’ wouldn’t seem out of place on The Dark Side of the Moon. Might it inspire David Gilmour to patch things up with Roger Waters? No.
On ‘Day For Night’, Mills is alone on acoustic guitar but for some very gentle organ. “Everything is fiction / Apart from how you feel” are lovely lyrics on a song that makes ‘Over the Rainbow’ seem as optimistic as ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. Title track ‘Wormslayer’ is seven and a half minutes of glorious oddness, comprising a smorgasbord of opportunities for air guitar and a two-minute Indian comedown. Final track ‘Dust Beneath Our Feet’ has the insouciance of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and the joy of Toploader performing to an appreciative crowd. Make of that what you will.
In 1996, Kula Shaker pretended it was 1967, and in 2026, they’re pretending it’s 1996. Nothing is new, and they don’t care – indeed, they’ve always sounded like they’re having a whale of a time. So, while Kula Shaker have always been about looking backwards, you can look forwards to their UK headline tour, starting this Saturday.
FEBRUARY 2026
7th – Brighton, Concorde 2
8th – Cambridge, Junction
9th – Holmfirth, Picturedrome
11th – Glasgow, Old Fruitmarket
12th – Manchester, O2 Ritz
13th – London, Islington Assembly Hall
Wormslayer is out now – get it here
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Review by Neil Laurenson
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