King Khan + The Shrines
Tuesday 06 Oct '09 - Belfast's The Black Box
- Support The Monotonous Tone + David Holmes
- Doors8pm
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{/map} {/venue_google_map}18 - 22 Hill Street
Belfast
BT1 2LA
T: 028 9024 4400
Venue website
Artist Bio
The fantastical tale of King "Bama Lama" Khan begins in 1995, when the Montreal-born son of immigrants from India (and self-professed grandson of the opium-addicted "Johnny Thunders of the sitar") left home to play bass for the Spaceshits, a Cramps-linked garage-rock group fronted by Mark Sultan, aka future King Khan partner BBQ Show. A few years later, while in Germany Khan formed "psychedelic soul big band" the Sensational Shrines. By 2004, King Khan and the Shrines had played shows across Europe, along the way releasing not just a handful of 7" and 10" records, but also two full-length albums: 2001's Three Hairs & You're Mine, which was produced by White Stripes engineer Liam Watson, and 2004's Mr. Supernatural.
Most people didn’t hear about King Khan and the Shrines until last year, when What Is?!, their most recent LP for German label Hazelwood, seared the band’s combustible combo—Stax plus Nuggets plus hiss-covered indie-rock screwiness—onto listeners’ collective noggins. It was as if they were the Dirtbombs on simultaneous James Brown and Sun Ra kicks, or Black Lips with less of the Vice-ready comedy and more underlying pathos. Now signed to Vice, King Khan and the Shrines present a few of the best tracks from What Is?!, along with some of their earlier cuts, on label debut The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines. Despite the appropriately over-the-top title, it’s not so much a Greatest Hits—What Is?! has slightly better songs overall—as a chronicle of how Khan became King.
The strongest tracks, where the band’s unhinged nostalgia meets not only squealing discord but also Khan’s stupefying jester/soul-man antics, appeared previously on What Is?!. Take nourishment from the Hammond-drenched soul food-stamps of “Welfare Bread”. Hear Khan go howling mad and a step past girl-crazy amid the sitar-like guitar and wah-wah pedals of “I Wanna Be a Girl”. The string-tying absurdity of “69 Faces of Love”, or the prickly dick jokes and “Venus in Furs” string drone of “The Ballad of Lady Godiva” are sadly absent, but the deafness-repping James Brown of “Land of the Freak”, the Stooge-ian assault of “No Regrets”, and the relatively sane red-line retro of “Outta Harm’s Way” are all present and accounted for, as they should be.