Sometimes what you need on a Magickal Monday like today is some fun, random, nonsense. And that’s exactly what you’ll get from this week’s Monday Magick featured track, “Mystical Machine Gun”, a 1999 single from psychedelic Britpop band Kula Shaker’s second album ‘Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts’.
“Mystical Machine Gun” is all ’60s stoner nostalgia. It has faux-mystical sitars, “eastern” hand drums, and wah-wah guitars aplenty. It’s also got the sort of perfectly nonsensical lyrics that would make John Lennon and Beck extremely proud. “Your a wizard in a blizzard, a mystical machine gun” shouts lead vocalist Crispian Mills on the song’s chorus. Wait…I’m a what now? Sure, whatever you say Crispian! I’m not sure if the magickal gobbledygook being spouted is the product of too much LSD, or the product of fronting like you’ve had too much LSD. But it doesn’t matter because it’s the exact sort of schtick that has always made Psych-Rock so much fun. And if “Mystical Machine Gun” is anything it’s fun. Heh, heh, I’ve sad “fun” so much it sounds weird now. “Funnnnn.”
Like so much else Britpop from the late ’90s Kula Shaker was heavily indebted to the sounds of ’60s psychedelia in general and The Beatles specifically. They never enjoyed the same success as some of their more popular contemporaries though. Perhaps that had something to do with some comments frontman Crispian Miller made that seemed to praise Hitler and the Nazis, specifically their penchant for mysticism and “good uniforms”?
Music is magick!
