I don't know if the spirit of Gerry Garcia was there, but the style of George Harrison was definitely present and correct when Kula Shaker took the SFX stage last night for their first ever Irish gig. The sound of Indian sitars wafted over the eager crowd as guitar guru Crispian Mills and his apostles of retro appeared onstage like silhouettes of another age; and, when they charged straight into The Beatles Baby You're A Rich Man, their psychedelic instincts were right on the money. "This one's for George", shouted the son of actress Hayley Mills, before introducing the first of a batch of new Shaker songs, each one sounding older and more derivative than the last, which was no more than we expected.
Yes, Kula Shaker unashamedly plunder the sunken galleon which once was the Summer of Love, robbing the graves of The Grateful Dead and The Idle Race, then rattling the bones in front of us until we have no choice but to dance. Unlike some of pop's retrograde upstarts, however, they do it with such grace and agility that you don't have a chance to catch your breath and cry hippie.
303 is the one before 909, and Crispian careers down the retro highway with tongue firmly embedded in his fresh faced cheek. Into The Deep goes a bit too far, nearly drowning in its influences, but Grateful When You're Dead thankfully proves that there's still life in the old hippy dogma.
When the wah wah intro of Hey Dude kicks in, the karma finally feels right, and the cover of Deep Purple's Hush suddenly seems to make sense. It only requires the extended tantric thrill of Govinda to finally take things to a transcendental level.
