A disappointingly truncated, yet still pretty damn great, Kula Shaker experience.

I first listened to Kula Shaker’s 7th album “Natural Magick” in a slightly unorthodox setting. It was released to streaming at midnight on Friday the 2nd of February 2024, which just happened to be 4pm on the Thursday afternoon on the west coast of Canada, where I found myself in transit at Vancouver airport, waiting for my flight home to London. I’d been visiting my Mum in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, for the previous two weeks, a trip that was as much to deal with practical legal and financial issues around my late Dad’s estate and my Mum’s care arrangements as it was to have a pleasant family visit. I was ready to return to normality back home in London, and as I waited for the plane that would take me back, was happy to discover that my Spotify account was still working on UK time and I could access this new album from the band that had become one of the all-time greats to me over the previous few years.

I will admit, however, that on first listen I was not overwhelmingly impressed. I’d loved the conceptual weirdness mixed with hard-hitting social commentary of their previous album, “The 1st Congregational Church of Enteral Love and Free Hugs”, and “Natural Magick” seemed something of a step back into more traditional and less adventurous classic rock territory. (I did have to raise a wry smile at the opening to “Kalifornia Blues”, which features an airplane announcement bemoaning an imminent landing in grey London, when I was looking forward to doing the exact same thing in approximately ten hours.)

But on further listening the album’s strengths shone through. It’s an incredibly consistent collection of, if you’ll pardon the term, absolute bangers. The storming riffs, stirring tunes and biting social criticism that you would expect from the boys are all present and correct. It stands as a worthy successor to “Eternal Love”, despite being a much more conventional album in comparison.

When it came time for the “Natural Magick” tour, I was initially disappointed that Kula Shaker’s London date for this tour occurred on the very night I was booked to see Take That. So I immediately snapped up a ticket once they announced this second show the following evening, and looked forward to an eclectic two gig weekend. And once the day came round, I was raring to head to Camden despite my post Take That fatigue, though secretly pleased that this gig was to have an early start and finish to make way for the Ballroom’s club night.

My somewhat brief diary entry for this evening starts positively:

‘Great venue, perfect atmosphere. The Dhol Foundation setting the scene with buoyant bhangra grooves. The incense, the swirly psychedelic lights. The boys were on fire, BUT…’

I’ve complained in several blog posts and vlogs on my Kula gigs of the past few years that they had not included one of their most storming tunes, “Great Hosannah”, in the setlist. At the gigs I went to in 2022 and 2023 I had been perplexed at its omission. For this 2024 tour, I had perused the setlists with interest, and was overjoyed to see that not only was “Great Hosannah” now reinstated but also another of my faves, the rarely played “I’m Still Here”. Unfortunately, on the one gig of the tour that I went to, Crispian was suffering from a croaky voice, and a couple of tunes had to be culled – and it just happened to be the two that I was most looking forward to.

This left me somewhat deflated, despite the fact that everything else was as brilliant as it always is as a Kula Shaker gig. The new songs shone in particular, with the driving riff of “Natural Magick” magnificently magnetic, and the addition of singer Triparna Mukherjee Roy for several songs including “Chura Liya” and another of my favourites “Happy Birthday” was inspired. Classics like “Hey Dude”, “Tattva” and “Govinda” were as epic and rousing as ever. But given the removal of some fantastic, classic Kula tunes from the setlist, it left me somewhat bemused that they still performed a cover of Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart”, which surely would have been an obvious choice to cull.

As I concluded in my diary: ‘Everything else was AMAZING! But seriously, “Groove Is In The Heart” but no “Great Hosannah”? Bizarre.’

Overall, I can accept that my slightly disappointing gig experience was mostly down to bad luck – singers are allowed to get ill, after all. And now we find ourselves in the midst of yet another new era for this most busy of bands, with their 8th album “Wormslayer” due on the 30th of January. Last summer, when they announced some Canadian dates in September 2025, I made tentative plans to combine a trip to see them there with a visit to my Mum. However, she unfortunately commenced a rapid decline in health which meant a more urgent visit to that country was required. This distraction meant that I missed out on a ticket to their upcoming tour for “Wormslayer”, and if I’m being honest, I’ve found myself a bit less invested in the band this time round. Maybe this is just down to the stresses of life that have plagued me in recent months, but so far the new songs have not ignited my interest quite so much as previous eras. The bizarre decision to create an AI video for the single “Good Money” was even more off putting, as it felt entirely antithetical to the ethos of the band.

So right now, I’m not sure how much I will end up participating in Kula Shaker thrills this year. But I’ve still pre-ordered the album, and set a Twickets alert for their London gig, and they remain absolutely one of my all-time favourite bands. So who knows, you may yet find me swaying to “Govinda” et al at a Kula Shaker gig in 2026.

And if I do go, then maybe, just maybe, this time they’ll play “Great Hosannah”.