Atlantic crossings

England's three new buzz bombs

by Richard C. Walls

The Brits continue to invade -- or attempt to. The problem is that there's no unified front leading the charge. Oasis and their kin may set the standard as to what the current Brit-pop mainstream aspires to, but mainstreams are fleeting these days -- and reactions against them are swift.

For the moment it's still cool to be Beatle-esque, which means you may at times vaguely resemble Badfinger or Squeeze. Apart from that, British retro's range is indicated by three new bands who have just shipped product stateside: the modish Ocean Colour Scene, ashram philosophers Kula Shaker, and the sex-drugs-and-stumbling-over-their-shoelaces louts of Pusherman. All three will hit Boston this month.

Ocean Colour Scene are already very popular in ol' Blighty, a Top 10 item -- and listening to their MCA debut, Moseley Shoals, you can see why. The members of this basic quartet -- Simon Fowler singing, Steve Cradock on guitar, Damon Minchella on bass, and Oscar Harrison on drums -- are slick, and they know that nothing succeeds like a catchy song; their best bits are thought-out hooks made for radio or video repetition, with light garnishings of psychedelia (i.e., funny noises). They get tagged with the Beatle-esque thing a lot, though only "The Day We Caught the Train" sounds like a direct homage, evoking the bridge from "A Day in the Life." Other evocations are "Let's Spend the Night Together" on "40 Past Midnight," "Wild Horses" on "The Downstream," the aforementioned Badfinger/Squeeze nexus on "Policemen & Parties," and Bob Seger on "One for the Road."

The comparisons are relevant because it's the band's stated intention to honor the past that punk tried to obliterate. What they're preferring, then, is rock neo-classicism -- which is doubtless, to borrow from another golden oldie, here to stay. No more developments, only recycling, just like jazz. Learn to live with it. And given the abundance of material to recycle, Ocean Colour Scene are to be commended for their good taste, the way they focus their eclecticism, and that modicum of imagination that almost gives them an identity. Now if they'd just work on their lyrics: "The brilliance of my fleeting mind/Chimes like voices in foreign caves." Sigh.

Kula Shaker are a little more dicy. Their debut album, K (Columbia), is currently number one in Britain, which is interesting because they don't write catchy, well-crafted, smartly derivative pop songs. What they do offer is large doses of Spirituality 101: hippie bromides sung over swirling, static music. Some of the cuts sound like Led Zeppelin in an acoustic mode -- kinda Eastern, kinda Brit folk. The lyrics are not exactly challenging; on "Temple of Everlasting Light," singer and group auteur Crispian Mills asks, "Will I ever see the pleasure that will never end/Hidden in the misty forest that desire sends?"

Well, no.

Mills forges ahead, unaware that his path is well trodden. "Smart Dogs" displays that particular sort of arrogance that accompanies the first blush of ersatz enlightenment. He thinks he knows something we don't. More fool he.

Still, it's hard to dislike someone who describes euphoria as "a feeling like no other/Spending Easter with your mother." (His, by the way, is actress Hayley Mills.) Or sings "Got my stash/Think I'll grow a big ol' hairy moustache" on "303," a song on which an otherwise latent notion of Brit pop peeks through. Or offers a few yards of lyric in Sanskrit to up his credibility. There's some sort of innocence here, and one just feels compelled to let it be.

Pusherman, on the other hand, beg to be stomped on. Their Epic debut, Floored, offers the kind of loud, droning, sloooooow clod rock that sucks the air right out of the room. This sextet use the word "fuck" a lot so you'll know they're not pussies. They take plain speaking to the edge of the avant-garde: "If I had thoughts like you do/Then I'd be down there with you/But I don't think like you do/So I'm not down there with you." They're really, really awful. And yet, if Ocean Colour Scene's reclamations of the past don't speak to you, and if Kula Shaker's satori-lite doesn't ring your bell, then this crude sludge with its godawful slabs of grinding rock gargantuanism might be just what you're looking for. You poor bastard.

Kula Shaker play the Paradise with Rasputina this Sunday, November 10. Ocean Colour Scene open for the Who at the Worcester Centrum Tuesday and Thursday, November 12 and 14; they also play T.T. the Bear's Place on November 23. Pusherman play Bill's Bar on November 19.