At the moment that you wake from sleepingand you know it’s all a dreamWell the truth may come in strange disguisesNever knowing what it means.
The autumnal equinox is supposed to be about balance, a cosmic see-saw where the day finally admits the night is winning. At Irving Plaza, Kula Shaker took that symmetry, stuffed it into a battered Marshall stack, and detonated it across Manhattan. The stage looked like a shrine built by a psychedelic carpenter: colorful malas drooped over guitars and amps, beads dangling like electric rosaries, waiting for Crispian Mills to strike the first chord and send the faithful tumbling into ecstasy.
Mills took on the role as mischievous ringmaster, steering the night with flamboyant abandon. At his side, Alonza Bevan grounded the music with basslines that beat like a second heart. Winterhart drove the drums with a near-shamanic force, while Darlington, the cosmic organist, unleashed synth swells and keyboard runs that cascaded like stained glass breaking into light. Together, the four locked into a form both seamless and electric.
They opened with Great Hosannah from Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, and the song roared like a choir shot through with kerosene. Mills’s guitar playing was already aflame, sparks practically jumping off the strings. Alonza Bevan anchored the storm on bass, every note thick as wet rope, while Paul Winterhart’s drumming galloped, shamanic and insistent. Jay Darlington sat behind his keys like a wizard with a stack of spellbooks, dialing up the psychedelic projections that sprawled across the walls in amoebic patterns.
The setlist was a veritable collage of eras and tempers: Idon’twannapaymytaxes and Ophelia from 1st Congregational Church of Eternal Love and Free Hugs rubbed shoulders with the hallucinatory folk of Into the Deep.
Their cover of Hawkwind’s Hurry On Sundown shimmered like a love letter to psychedelic lineage, while Mystical Machine Gun folded in a snarling snippet of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs, reminding us of the roots of both rage and joy in amplified sound. Watching Mills play guitar is, in itself, a crazy religious experience, as if he is trying to embody the flurry of noise itself.
The old tracks landed like well-aimed prayers: Knight on the Town, Shower Your Love, Grateful When You’re Dead / Jerry Was There. These were hymns from K (1996), still capable of making an audience holler as though Clinton were still president and Britpop hadn’t yet curdled. But it was the newer material that shocked the room into the realization that this band isn’t coasting on incense and nostalgia. The masses sang them back with the same lung-shredding passion as Hey Dude.
They launched into one of their biggest hits, Tattva, which, for many 90s teens, was a brief introduction to Sanskrit and Eastern principles. “Tattva, acintya-bheda-abheda-tattva” translates loosely as “the truth of the inconceivable, simultaneous oneness and difference of all things.” In Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, it’s the paradox of the soul and the divine being both united and distinct; a riddle to be lived rather than solved. On this night, the chant resonated with added weight: the autumnal equinox marked the balance of light and dark, while inside, Kula Shaker turned the mystery of oneness and difference into music loud enough to shake the scales of Libra season.
Good Money (from their upcoming Wormslayer album) was another highlight. At the climax, Mills flung a flurry of phony $100 bills into the pit. A blizzard of worthless wealth, fluttering green under the strobe lights. The audience went berserk, scrambling with the zeal of Wall Street interns after an IPO, laughing, hollering, stuffing bills into shirts. It was theatre, sure, but also a perfect parable: greed turned carnival, banknotes unravelled into paper rain.
They closed with Govinda, their eternal mantra, where once again Sanskrit met Fender and the room swayed like a single organism. Irving Plaza temporarily transformed into a temple where East kissed West, religion locked arms with rock ’n’ roll, and everyone shouted along as if salvation depended on volume.
All four members played with electrified grace, their energy boundless, their humour intact. The music itself seemed to shimmer with the notion of what is most holy in art: that it is not perfect, but alive…and alive it must remain. The fabled rapture might not have come after all, but the audience at Irving Plaza certainly was in that state.
Kula Shaker are currently on tour in the US with The Dandy Warhols. Don’t miss this run!
- Sep 30 – Tempe, AZ — Tue 7:00 PM · Marquee Theatre Tempe · Tickets
- Oct 2 – Santa Ana, CA — Thu 7:00 PM · The Observatory · Tickets
- Oct 3 – San Diego, CA — Fri 7:00 PM · House of Blues San Diego · Tickets
- Oct 4 – Pioneertown, CA — Sat 7:00 PM · Pappy & Harriet’s · Tickets
- Oct 6 – Los Angeles, CA — Mon 8:00 PM · The Bellwether · Tickets
- Oct 8 – San Francisco, CA — Wed 8:00 PM · The Regency Ballroom · Tickets
Kula Shaker return to the UK in February 2026 for a run of headline shows in support of Wormslayer.
- 7th – Brighton, Concorde 2
- 8th – Cambridge, Junction
- 9th – Holmfirth, Picturedrome
- 11th – Glasgow, Old Fruitmarket
- 12th – Manchester, O2 Ritz
- 13th – London, Islington Assembly Hall
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