KULA SHAKER

It's hard not to be cynical when Kula Shaker's Crispian Mills tells his audience that "I'm gonna dedicate this next song to planet Earth." Few of the band's songs are deep enough to deserve such a weighty introduction -- even in a packed house of 1,300 shimmying, shaking, squealing fans watching Mills coax psychedelic tremolos out of his guitar while shaking his blue bellbottoms and floppy blonde 'do.

Kula Shaker is part of the current British Invasion, and it looks like the Sanskrit-damaged psychedelic rock band is already ready for the big time. At the Avalon, the group played one hook-filled chorus after another, adding plenty of rock star heroics as wah-wah riffs held down the rhythm side of things and bent strings sent sound soaring to heaven during the solos.

Kula Shaker's major-label debut, "K," is a bit heavy on the sitars, tablas, and processed vocals, but the group's Beatlesque hooks have made its single, "Tattva," (don't ask) a favorite at modern rock radio. Live, the band's members are all muscle and speed, from Mills's guitar to Alonzo Bevan's melodic bass lines (thank you, Paul) and Jay Darlington's Hammond B3-style organ swells. That instrumental prowess, combined with a sense of dynamics and verse-chorus-verse pop appeal make songs like "Hey Dude" jump and help the band avoid the Manchester beat blahs.

Kula Shaker's lyrics, on the other hand, sound like hippie-rock at its worst -- just listen to "I'm telling you man, Jerry isn't dead, you can feel his presence everywhere...." "At the moment that you wake from sleeping and you know that it's all a dream, well the truth may come in strange disguises, never knowing what it means." And then there are those song introductions, including "Today is the birthday of a saint from India...."

At its best, Kula Shaker captures the hook-laden high spirit found in Deep Purple's "Hush," whic