Released on
April 1,2002, this is
Cornershop's first movement for four years - when
When I Was Born For the 7th Time was released. That was the
album that had
da 'shop's first
number one on (
Brimful of Asha), something they have made clear they did not enjoy.
The Tracks: 1. Heavy Soup; 2. Staging The Plaguing Of The Raised Platform; 3. Music Plus 1;
4. Lessons Learned From Rocky I to Rocky III; 5. Wogs Will Walk; 6. Motion The 11; 7. People Power;
8. Sounds Super Recordings; 9. The London Radar; 10. Spectral Mornings; 11. Slip The Drummer One;
12. Heavy Soup (Outro); 13. Bonus Track
In terms of
genre,
Cornershop have always been difficult.
Reviewers have always praised their
superb and individual mix of
Oriental instrumentation and
Western pop tunes, but the amount
of varied
musical
sounds in
Handcream... still has me
dazed with
awe.
Cornershop "manage to
locate the
secret connections between
funk,
hip-hop turntablism,
boogie rock,
roots reggae,
French
house,
Punjabi
folk, heavy
psychedelia and, yes, good
old-fashioned indie-pop," to quote
the
Amazon reviewer.
Hip-hop turntablism ... How could I not quote that
phrase? To make things
clear for you though, I will say that
Cornershop sit ultimately in the
indie-pop group
of today's
British music scene.
I will not go into each
song as I don't feel I could describe them well enough, but will just mention
a few details that may be of
interest.
The first and so far only single released off
Handcream... has been
Lessons Learned From Rocky I to
Rocky III, which has been described as similar to "
Sticky Fingers era
Rolling Stones". It has
not been received incredibly well in the
pop world, but is the only song of its kind on the
album,
with little
style experimentation.
Track three,
Music Plus One, has been noted for its similarity to the French
Disco-
House band
Daft Punk, who
have a not-so-varying but incredibly
individual sound. It is a take off but a very good one, and
i'm sure no one could have done
Daft Punk such
justice as this wonderful
band.
My last note is that the track
Spectral Mornings is a (roughly) 15 minute
guitar/
sitar jam with
Noel Gallagher. Just in case you were
wondering.
Lyrically,
Cornershop are again difficult to place or
explain. To me, not having ever looked up
any
lyrics, the majority of songs on
Handcream... have no discernable meaning. However, one can
admire the way that interesting sounding
phrases are slipped in to songs which, combined with
Singh's voice, add to the
music's
air of greatness. An example on
Handcream...
being "Against the 17 winds and the 2 twin 12's/All the goodness that the
west of world held," which
apparently is about
11th September...?
There are definite
exceptions to the lyrical elusiveness on the
album however:
People Power is
clearly, whether seriously or not, advocating the
youth of this "
Disco Hour" to get "onto the
streets," after all "disco is half way to full
discontent," Grrreat! The single (
Lessons Learned...)
is apparently a critique of the
record industry, though this isn't
spelt out with incredible
clarity.
Handcream... develops to an incomprehensible,
infinite level the beauty I find on
When I Was Born...
and
weaves in a huge
catalogue of extra ideas seen rarely from
Da 'shop before:
I’m talking about
house,
reggae,
rock,
sampling, and definitely some quality
hip-hop turntablism.
The
commercial success of the
album can't yet be told, but I see it as an album that could be popular,
rather than a set of
singles. The
broadsheet reviewers here are certainly
wetting themselves over it,
whether (to take the cynical view) because
Cornershop &
Handcream... are simply a
picture of what these
journos tend to like, or because the
album is just
superb
pop perfection!