Waiting For The BOMB To Drop
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.