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Album Review
by SashaS
26-3-2002
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| Cornerhops' 'Handcream' |
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Cornershop: 'Handcream For A Generation'
(Wiiija)
Cornershop are establishing a ‘world-beatz-rock’ category for the globe mired in middling
In the world hell-bent on recycling every note and every move that has ever been successful, and very often – not (as so frequently-and-regretfully stated), bands that try to be different should be hailed with loudspeakers, banners and ticker-tape parades. They usually are not due to belonging to that branch of alternative otherwise known as underground but Cornershop could have risen above it five years ago when their third album, ‘When I Was Born For The 7th Time’, was attracting huge mass attention with the hit single ‘Brimful Of Asha’.
Cornershop could have capitalised at the time but they, and one has to admire them for it, decided to take a prolonged break and work on alternative project, Clinton. They are back now, refreshed, with renewed ideas and ready to shake your world, once again. The greatest thing about ‘Handcream For a Generation’ is that not only continues where ‘7th Time’ left off but also expends vocabulary of their multi-lingual ‘school’.
Pop reporting is as full of clichés as the scene it describes but ‘unclassifiable’ is what this is: there are elements of rock, pop, jazz, funk, punk, junk (pardon, got carried away with rhyming), all fused with an eastern feel for rhythms and atmosphere. Sounding refreshingly new as the astral time, this is music that can truly be described as ‘World-beatz-rock’. There are so many elements with epic ‘Spectral Morning’, all 14-minutes of it featuring guitaring skills of Noel Gallagher, bringing it to the bottom (or it should be – peak?) of nirvana-like state.
Samples, breaks, mixes, sense of humour… this is an aural feast. Former Oasis-man, Guigsy, appears on first song culled for the single, ‘Lessons Learned From Rocky I To Rocky III’; there is another guest, the US soul legend Otis Clay who graces the feel-good opener ‘Heavy Soup’, and then, turntablist Rob Swift of New York’s X-Men joined Tjinder Singh in co-producing two tracks. That’s how wide the spectrum of music is contained here.
But, it is not all new and ‘original’: ‘People Power’ is 3 years old and was initially done for the ‘alter-ego’ outfit, Clinton in 1999. Unfortunately their record label rejected it; this is the remix for a single that was nixed and you can try to figure out – why?
‘When I Was Born For The 7th Time’ swept all before it on its release in the late summer of 1997 and it was voted the Best Album of the year by Spin magazine in the USA, and nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in the UK. ‘Handcream’ should win the damn thing.
Because it is a triumph.
8.6/10
Tour dates:
14 April – Waterfront, Norwich
15 April – Concorde 2, Brighton
16 April – Arts Centre, Colchester
17 April – Cockpit, Leeds
20 April – Leadmill, Sheffield
21 April – QMU, Glasgow
22 April – MDH, Manchester
23 April – Shepherds Bush Empire, London
SashaS
13-4-2002
Cornershop’s ‘Handcream For A Generation’ is released 01 April on Wiiija
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