Taking Sides: Mansun vs. Kula Shaker

Kula Shaker, I'm still ashamed to admit, gave me that post-baggy neo-psychedlic summer fun whizz bang fizz feeling, plus, well, that irrational hormonal "oh my god, I want to dangle myself in your proto-aryan gene pool" thing.

they had a real manics-type cult thing going on, many manics fans converted to mansun when msp went more conventional in the post-richey years. i think "six" really escalated the obsessive nature of their following - it sounds silly (especially now), but i like it plenty. definitely their best work. agreed that it's an album of great moments, and not a good end-to-end listen, but the highlights are tremendous - inverse midas, anti-everything, fall-out, first two minutes of "being a girl", the opera/spoken word mid-section.

"little kix" was terrible. i saw them play live a few weeks before they split up and it was a half-hearted, laughable disgrace. they should have continued the wacky prog silliness - the orchestral pop thing was blandsville.

kula shaker are a'ight. not as bad as some people would have you believe. i like "tattva". i still have "shower your love" on cassette single, and even give it the odd airing. a gorgeous song, their best, and a forgotten classic. download immediately.

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/crp/genesisplendeurs/images/albums/pendragon/masquerade.jpg

I really fucking loved "Six" when it came out - not only did I like the album itself, it was also a big and happy surprise, b/c I'd had them down as lightweight sub-Radiohead types before that. I still like it a lot, & pull it out and listen to it from time to time, and I always enjoy it, though there's a few places where I hit the skip button. I can remember when "I can only dissapoint u" came out, man, what an appropriate title. I'd had some advance warning that the album sounded like they'd been listening to nothing but Van der Graaf Generator, so you can probably imagine it was er a bit of a let down. One of the b-sides "The Golden Stone" is really great, though, and strangely enough, it does have a kind of early solo hammill-ish thing about it.

Kula Shaker I remember hearing when they did their radio session on MArk Radcliffe's show, before they had a single out, and also on "The White Room" on tv. They were pretty thrilling at that point, they had this late psych/early prog thing, plus they rocked. WTF happened after that, I don't know, it's like they did the whole when a good band starts to suck thing between getting signed and releasing their first rekkid. There's one good track on "K" that I remember, and I think a B-side on the "grateful when yr dead" single was ok. I saw them live, and they were a contender for the worst band I've ever seen. They were fucking rubbish.

So, I pick Mansun, because even though they let me down horribly, they at least thrilled me in the first place, and made an album I still really like. Plus, the title of "I can only disappoint u" suggest they knew exactly how much of a let down it was going to be. I wonder if they got dragged onto the carpet by their record company after "Six". Kula Shaker lose out because their whole "raga-rock" thing was really fucking lame - raga-scale guitar solo + a bit of sampled tanpura on the intro and outro = k-lame decal job.

In my ideal world (tm), Mansun would have kept going, getting stranger and stranger, until they reached the point where they could sign to cuneiform.

Three albums from around the same time I liked a lot better, and still listen to are Dark Star's "Twenty Twenty Sound", Supergrass "In it for the Money" and Six by Seven's first album.

This was a great idea for a thread, thanks NTC Alex.

I just remembered "Railings" guest vocals howard devoto! ++++points for Mansun.

They had some great pop songs, but they worked really well as a whole on the album too.

I always sorta think of them as a pop(ish) Mogwai. This is very much a compliment.

Inexplicably revisited both bands recently. Neither have aged especially well.

I actually saw both bands perform live ... and have relatively no memory of either occasion.

Kula Shaker, I'm still ashamed to admit, gave me that post-baggy neo-psychedlic summer fun whizz bang fizz feeling, plus, well, that irrational hormonal "oh my god, I want to dangle myself in your proto-aryan gene pool" thing.

christ almighty