As soon as I received When I Was Born for the 7th Time in

the mail I did

four things. First, of course, I threw it on. Next, after the entire

album had

played, I put on their last long-player, Woman's Gotta Have

It. Then I put

on their first full-length album (released on Merge). What I heard

was a musical

progression over the course of just three albums that is almost

unheard of

nowadays. What was the fourth thing I did? Well, I seemed to

remember writing

something about a live Cornershop show for Addicted To Noise

about a year

ago. So, I logged on, found the review and read what I wrote:

"Cornershop's fusion of disparate elements does not have the

false ring of

many recent world music projects that attempt to meld the

supposed polar

opposites of east/west, lo-fi/hi-fi, and analog/digital. Nor is their

sound reminiscent of the mid-1960s pop that naively incorporated

sitar into

a largely Western context. 'Norwegian Wood' this ain't. In fact, a

Beatles comparison might not be too far off the mark. Just as the

Beatles

traveled the distance from 'Love Me Do' to 'Strawberry Fields

Forever' in

just three years, the amazing evolution of Cornershop from its

largely

indie-guitar rock origins on its first single three years ago to the

exploratory pulse of its current incarnation is extremely exciting. If

Sunday night's performance is any indication, this band appears

to be

poised on dropping a bomb on the international music

community."

OK, so When I was Born isn't the total BOMB I was

predicting, but it

certainly fulfills the promise of Woman's Gotta Have It in

spades.

Another thing ... Cornershop surprised me by covering the above

mentioned

Beatles song on the new album, so I guess "Norwegian Wood" it

is, but with

a twist. At the earliest stages of the group's evolution,

Cornershop's

mastermind, T. Singh, has been writing highly politically and

culturally

conscious lyrics and has been an outspoken critic of racism and

imperialism. In the case of "Norwegian Wood," Singh practices a

unique

form of cultural (re)appropriation by singing the Beatles classic in

his

Indian immigrant parents' native tongue -- Punjabi. While the

instrumentation on "Norwegian Wood" is relatively straight (and is

effective in that particular context), the rest of When I Was

Born more

successfully integrates the east/west, hi-fi/lo-fi, analog/digital, and

rock/electronica components of the group's music than on

previous efforts.

One of the album's highlights is the Automator (the sonic wizard

behind

Dr. Octagon) produced track "Candyman." Over a fly mid-tempo

backbeat,

catchy bass line and sparse collages, Singh accompanies the

highly

underrated MC Justin Warfield in serving up an odd tasting

cultural stew.

Elements associated with African-American, Indian and Anglo

musical

cultures interweave like arms and legs in a particularly

complicated game

of Twister. Despite the real potential of failure, the song jells

together as if it were a cookie-cutter Owen Bradley produced

Nashville country

song. Speaking of country songs, another gem hidden in the

middle of

When I Was Born is a duet with Tarnation's Paula Frazer

titled "Good To

Be On the Road Again." Whether slipping on cowboy boots,

fiddling with a

sampler, or directing his sitar player, Singh appears to be enough

at home

in just about any genre to either subtly manipulate it or completely

fuck

it up. I guess that's what happens to the son of Indian parents who

immigrated to England. The mixture of cultures that Singh

encountered

(and the experience of being a resented minority in a rapidly

changing

country) must have had a major impact on him because he refuses

to be

placed in any sort of box.

This post-modern, contingent world has pushed some artists to

drop the

notion of politics like a hot potato (or a Hootie and the Blowfish

record -- it's the same thing), but Singh still finds plenty of room to

exercise his political consciousness while embracing the

playfulness and

fragmentation of modern cultural identity. In the tinny-drum-

machine-electro-

ironic party anthem "Funky Days" he sings, "funky days are back

again... zip-zap guns are back again... big shoes are back again ...

worker strikes are back again ..." And

on "Norwegian Wood" he reminds us that covers can not only be

fun; they can

be political statements that succeed by not beating people over

the head.

Overall, I like the record because it doesn't really sound like any

other

CDs or slabs of vinyl I've thrown on lately, and that's refreshing.

It's

nice to pop it in and let the sitars, samplers and sounds take me

away to

a less "authentic," but more true-to-life world in which music,

Microsoft,

malls and creative muses uneasily share the same space.