By Rob Duguay

“America hasn’t lost its historical and romantic legacy for British bands. At least that’s the case with us, anyway.”

Kula Shaker formed during a weird time in music. The act from London perfected their trademark blend of Indian-infused psychedelic rock during the height of Britpop during the ’90s, right before boy bands and formulaic pop started to dominate the mainstream. After calling it a day in 1999, the band got back together in 2004 and resumed their successful creation of electrifying music, serving up a steady output of releases. They’re no strangers to performing in Boston. On September 21 the band will be performing at Brighton Music Hall with Los Angeles psychedelic garage rockers Levitation Room, who open the evening at 8 p.m.

I talked to frontman Crispian Mills about a couple of the band’s new singles, what comes to mind when performing in Boston, and plans for an upcoming album.

The Arts Fuse: Over the past few months, Kula Shaker has put out a few singles, including “Charge of The Light Brigade” and “Broke As Folk.” What was the creative impulse behind these tunes?

Crispian Mills: We like to keep ourselves excited by new music. It’s not a forced thing, we’re just very prolific as a group. We did some songwriting sessions, and lots of ideas were coming out of it, so we went into Alonza [Bevan]’s studio, which is in Belgium, and we began to play live. Everything was put down as it was performed and it was a lot of fun. It was great, and “Broke As Folk” came out of that. I think it was the first of this new batch of songs.“Broke As Folk” developed out of us playing an old song of ours called “Jerry Was There.” We often jam when we are playing this tune, in honor of Jerry [Garcia]. We started to sound like The Doors.

Rather than that being a bad thing, we doubled down, really went for it, and enjoyed playing those grooves. The song became a real banger. Where you record is sometimes half the story of a recording, and being in Belgium was great because we weren’t on the clock. It was a very idyllic and medieval environment: a village in the French-speaking part of the Walloon Region. That’s what it’s called, even though it sounds like a place for lunatics. Then we found a studio in Devon with the most fantastic load of gear and a very creative engineer named Peter Miles. We started another session there, and “Charge of The Light Brigade” came out of that.

We all got really excited that we were going to finish the record there. The single “Good Money” came out of that session. Now we have an album that’s led by those performances, which really get at how we sound live.

Crispin Mills performing at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in December 2022. Photo: Facebook

AF: The music videos for “Charge of The Light Brigade” and “Broke As Folk” are interesting. The former has a pregnant lady being chased by aristocratic vampires, while “Broke As Folk” is set against a giant battle. What was the experience like making these videos? And how involved were you with the visuals?

Mills: We came in at the end of the traditional music business right before it collapsed and became what it is today, fragmented and streaming-driven. One of the most unpleasant parts of the old model was that it was expected you would spend a considerable amount on making videos. Because they were a lot of money, they were very much driven by the marketing department of these record companies. It was very hard to control how you were presented because there’s so much cash involved. By the time you made a video the record was already finished and you were on a promotional cycle. I’m just bitching about record companies and video departments, but we kept on seeing these horrific bills for our videos, which we hated. They were the most expensive part of our recording process. When we started again in the 2000s we set out to make our own cottage industry, building the process up from scratch. The first thing we wanted to do was make the videos feel like we made them, that they’re an extension of the album.

We made it our mission, and they’re all good now, they’re all trustworthy because they reflect our mood. Any opportunity to put on makeup, wear wigs, and goof around, we will always be right there on the money. (laughs) [The video] for “Charge of The Light Brigade” is all smoke and mirrors; it was all done in London. The story with “Broke As Folk” is that everything you see was done in front of the camera. People assume when I was climbing up a cliff or the galleons were floating by it was all done with AI. Many online say that we are now using AI. But we weren’t — so the next video is going to be completely AI (laughs). Hopefully, everyone will think it’s real.

Kula Shaker. Photo: Dutch Doscher

AF: Kula Shaker has played in Boston a bunch over the years. What are your thoughts on coming back to perform at Brighton Music Hall?

Mills: America hasn’t lost its historical and romantic legacy for British bands. At least that’s the case with us, anyway. I don’t know how it is for other groups, but no matter how old we are, it’s always exciting to come back to America, especially playing in cities that have a reputation for hosting famous gigs. The Avalon was in Boston, which we played years ago. You feel as if you’re retracing the steps — and not just the music that came from America and the bands that came from America. But also the steps of the British bands who went over and were part of that exchange. Bands like Cream. We kind of play that music and all of our references are from that classic period. We’re like history buffs when it comes to this music.

AF: You definitely have a ’60s and ’70s rock vibe with your sound. You mentioned that these recent singles are part of an upcoming album called Wormslayer. It’s due out next year. Without giving too much away, what should listeners expect?

Mills: Well, Wormslayer is a bunch of tunes that were written very much with Jay [Darlington] as part of the band and as a result of the touring we did together around the release of the album Natural Magick. Some tunes on that album were written prior to Jay’s return. So what you got now, with the new album, is a condensed form of Kula Shaker that’s been tried and tested. The full lineup is intact. The album is a series of songs with more extended musical hashed out jams alongside pop songs, so it’s a mixture of that operatic storytelling that we’ve gone for in the past with the pop format. It’s a nice balance, actually, and it all builds up to the title track, which I’m very happy to say is over eight minutes long. We thought that if the track is going to be called “Wormslayer” the song has to live up to it. You have to have something special, so we made sure that track paid off when it was extended.

Rob Duguay is an arts & entertainment journalist based in Providence, who is originally from Shelton, CT. Outside of The Arts Fuse, he has also written for DigBoston, Aquarian Weekly, Providence Journal, Newport Daily News, Worcester Magazine, New Noise Magazine, Manchester Ink Link, and numerous other publications. While covering mostly music, he has also written about film, TV, comedy, theater, visual art, food, drink, sports, and cannabis.