Ocean Colour Scene shine at homecoming show

Ocean Colour Scene | Kula Shaker 
Birmingham Utilita Arena
Saturday 29th March 2025

Birmingham’s trad rock survivors celebrate a stunning homecoming at one of the Second City’s biggest arenas, with fellow Britpop revellers Kula Shaker in tow. Sam Lambeth sipped another rum and coke and told a dirty joke. 

Swirling, psychedelic shapes engulf a large screen behind the Utilita Arena stage, the kind that Super Hans and Jez would put on as a visual backdrop while getting toasted in Mark’s living room. Sitar music and Eastern voices fill the room as four sartorially brave men bound onto the stage, looking like extras from a Mighty Boosh offcut. “This ain’t fucking Ocean Colour Scene, is it?!” chokes a punter, enveloped by panic that Simon Fowler has suddenly discovered a love of Sanskrit. They should wash their mouth out, for this really could only be one band – Richmond psych rock stalwarts Kula Shaker. 

As predicted when they previously hit the Midlands last year, Kula Shaker are fast becoming a national institution and their return to arenas feels earned. What’s more, they seem more than up for it – at least from their stage wear. Bassist Alonza Bevan resembles a groove-inflicting Zorro, Jay Darlington is a stoic and shamanic presence behind the keys, while snake-hipped frontman Crispian Mills writhes and swaggers in sperm-destroyingly tight red and black drainpipes. Only drummer Paul Winter-Hart missed the memo, wearing a black beanie and t-shirt that makes him look like he’s about to step off the stool and do the morning park run. 

These adventurous, bold tailoring choices match the band’s vivid, kaleidoscopic back catalogue. Opener 303 is a powerful rush of mesmeric guitar solos, Mills’ nimble and aggressive fretwork leaving the audience floored. Floppy-fringed and pencil-thin, Mills is every inch the star his thespian folks were, scissors kicking wildly on the scuzzy ‘60s thrash of Grateful When You’re Dead and Hey Dude. 

Thankfully, any mentions of Swastikas is off the menu, but Mills and Co are always gloriously silly, and they dedicate one song to anyone that has been in “an abusive relationship…with the government.” Surprisingly, in an era where you can get cancelled for leaving the toilet seat up, Kula Shaker can still chant Indian mantras and get away with it. And thank god they can, for something transcendent occurs when the flourish of sitars introduces the swaying call-to-arms that is Govinda and a jagged riff dissolves into the psych-pop crunch of Tattva. The crowd haven’t got a clue what the hell any of these words mean, but they sing it back with unbridled passion. 

Kula Shaker’s sound may be unashamedly retro, but there is a blissed out innocence to the I’ve Got A Feeling-style majesty of Shower Your Love and the theatrical swirls of Into the Deep. A classicist band at heart, their cover of Hush has always felt totally natural, the foursome able to hunker down into a storm of squealing guitar solos, juddering keyboards and stomping drums. 

It’s daft, of course, and Kula Shaker probably deep down knows it. But there is still credence and authenticity in the band’s soulful, raw and hazy rock and roll, even if you expect the Utilita Arena’s crowd to now be burning incense and turning on lava lamps. 

On paper, Kula Shaker and Ocean Colour Scene probably make for strange bedfellows – the former are flamboyant, extroverted and a tad camp, while the latter are more straight-ahead, sensible and unassuming. What ties them together, beyond the Britpop era that launched and cemented their careers, is a deep-rooted love of ‘60s and ‘70s rock. It’s in their DNAs, but while Kula Shaker presents it in grandstanding swathes of wah wah sorcery, Ocean Colour Scene dabble in paisley-patterned folk and Stones-indebted riffs. Both bands are unafraid to live in the past, but it’s that obsession with a bygone era that has made them both such frequently compelling live acts. 

For Ocean Colour Scene, this is a glorious and well-deserved homecoming. Remember, probably only Nickelback have received the same sheer contempt that the Brummie veterans have endured. Their crime? Being too, well, normal. Workmanlike. Persistent. Dogged. Qualities that seemingly have no place in rock and roll. While their Britpop contemporaries perished in a sea of trip-hop, failed attempts at cracking America and shovel-loads of cocaine, OCS, the bastards, stuck around. Their greatest mistake, in a way, was not splitting up so that they could soak up all the revisionist plaudits. But when singer Simon Fowler bellows “it’s so good to be home” to a sea of spirited cheers, you realise that all those haters are sat behind keyboards – computer ones, no slight on Jay Darlington – while the real aficionados are here, in it for the long haul just like the band they love.

And when you can open with a song as magnificent as The Circle, you deserve to be playing somewhere huge. Bolstered by a wistful, chiming hook, its gentle refrains ooze nostalgia before its loveliness gives way to an extended coda that allows pint-sized Tasmanian devil Steve Cradock the first of many wandering sessions of guitar shredding. Anyone who knows OCS will understand that their best songs are a bit like the extra scenes you get in movie credits – stick around until the end and you’ll get something surprising and delightful. The Circle has it, the rollicking Hundred Mile High City has it and so does the mighty stomp of You’ve Got It Bad. The only exception to the rule is the smoky, lilting folk of Fleeting Mind, which instead has a protracted intro dedicated to Cradock’s thoughtful, tasteful guitar noodling. 

There’s an interesting push and pull to OCS’ discography, a battle between brawn and brain. The former is present in the juggernaut riff of July and especially so in crowd favourite The Riverboat Song, whose scalding motif gives way to a sea of swampy blues solos. But there is also a delicacy to these Dadrock specialists. The songs culled from 1999’s stately One From the Modern, in particular, are pastoral and rich – So Low is imaginative and regretful, anchored by Cradock’s melodic and deft guitar touches. Families soars, and Emily Chambers is lush and melancholic. 

There are frustrating moments, but not of the band’s making. For a group whose mammoth output in the ‘90s gifted them an indelible bind to their fans, it’s when they dare delve deeper into their back catalogue do they meet with indifference. 2003’s I Just Need Myself is another entry into Cradock’s book of bolshy, barreling intros, but it’s greeted like a fart on a tube train. The polished, e-bow led Drive Away, taken from 2005’s A Hyperactive Workout for the Flying Squad – yes, that is actually the album title – receives a few polite nods of the (mostly bald) head. Meanwhile, Cradock’s announcement that they’re going to play a B-side, the acoustic-led Mrs Jones, sends swarms of Fred Perry to the bar. 

But you have to greet the rough with the smooth, and tonight OCS remind a rammed crowd of their fellow Brum chums just how many hits they have and how resonant they remain. The grandstand sloganeering of Profit in Peace, a Lennon-esque chug buoyed by a simple but powerful mantra, has even the most ardent warhawk singing along. The Beatles-tinged ballad Better Day is gloriously bittersweet, the tumbling pianos of Traveller’s Tune give way to an infectious chorus and then there’s The Day We Caught the Train. It’s everything that makes Ocean Colour Scene such a compelling act – contemplative and melodic before unleashing a deceptively simple chorus that tugs at the memory banks and heart strings of every fervent fan present. 

“When you find that things are getting wild, don’t you need days like these,” Fowler sings in his hoarse baritone, as gravelly and as good as it was in 1996. Yes, Simon, we certainly do.

~

You can find Ocean Colour Scene on Facebook and their website. Their UK tour with Kula Shaker continues.

All words by Sam Lambeth. Sam is a journalist and musician. More of his work for Louder Than War is available on his archive. You can find his music on Spotify.

All photos by Paul Reynolds. He can be found on Instagram.