The past few years has seen many old fogie bands reform, the highlight obviously being the wonderful Pixies and the promise of a patched up Smashing Pumpkins. The latest band to jump on the reformation band wagon sees Crispian Mills forgetting his early attempts to scrape what little lime light he could, and instead dragging the stale corpse known as Kula Shaker around the UK.

Here are the facts. The old stuff from seminal album K still sounds great; ‘Hey Dude’, ‘Tattva’ and ‘303’ are still funky indie morsels. Tonight’s encore, the mesmerising ‘Govinda’, is a welcome reminder of how the band became so huge. Even tracks lifted from Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts have that warm familiar sound; opener ‘Sound of Drums’ gets the indie-nerd crowed all roused up, but you can’t help thinking that although it is nice to reminisce, it is often better to shove some stuff to the dank recesses of the mind.

The band use tonight to expose their devoted fan base to some new tunes, unfortunately this doesn’t signal the return of an indie master band. It’s a pity that most of the tunes are entirely forgettable apart from standout track ‘Dictator’, the chorus goes something like ‘I’m a dick, I’m a dick, I’m a dictator’ – which really doesn’t need much more elaboration. Yes, it isn’t that great.

So as anyone could have predicted, the old stuff is great (on the whole), and the new stuff is pants. By the end of the years happenings for the old K-S the UK will have forgotten about them again, and Crispian can start writing more crap songs with different people. Hooray.
(3/5)

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