First, the ancient sound of London circa late '66 and '67: The Beatles' Revolver, pirate radio, the Small Faces' "Tin Soldier," Pink Floyd's "See Emily Play," the hum of a nation's youth wired on Hindu incantation and the agitated buzzing of Pete Townshend's guitar amplifiers. Post-Oasis U.K. sensations Kula Shaker press all the right vintage-Brit-pop buttons on their ripping debut album, a fearlessly derivative retrospectacle of sound and shtick. The band's singer and guitarist, Crispian Mills, even has the right pedigree: His mother is the British actress and '60s Disney ingénue Hayley Mills. As a universal-consciousness raiser, K is mostly bad religion, fraught with transcendental goo (representative excerpt: "Well, the truth may come in strange disguises/Send the message to your mind"). Focus instead on the band's smartly turned-out melodies ("Tattva," "Grateful When You're Dead") and Mills' chipper, Paul McCartney-esque variation on Liam Gallagher's acidic drawl. Then make your way back to the Move's "Blackberry Way" and The Who Sell Out to hear how it really was.

Dead Cities is the sound of deep shit at high tide, a vivid digital rendering of Your Town going to hell in a bucket. To dance this mess around takes some doing. The beats – more late-'80s Madchester shuffle than '90s hyperjungle – are largely punctuative, not propulsive; the rhythm scheme in "Her Face Forms in Summertime" is languid almost to the point of catatonia. FSOL's Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans are dashing scavengers, however, fashioning their apocalyptic electronica from ravaged, rehabilitated scraps of Run-DMC, Ozric Tentacles, Welsh songbird Mary Hopkin and a little girl crying in London's Hyde Park. For a record that is ostensibly a requiem for urban civilization, Dead Cities is full of color, mood and an emotionally agitated, last-stand vitality that rarely grows in the suburbs. (RS 750/751)

DAVID FRICKE