You love a band, you lose touch with said band or they get lost in the never-ending parade of new bands, and then you happen upon them again and they remind you why you loved them in the first place. Such is the case, for me, with Britpop’s Cornershop, who once upon a time stood high atop the pops thanks to the 1997 smash hit “Brimful of Asha” and the albums Woman’s Gotta Have It (1995) and When I Was Born for the 7th Time (1997).
But they reinserted themselves back into my consciousness with 2020’s England Is a Dream, which comes very close to matching anything they’ve ever done. Cornershop has always stood apart due to British Asian band co-founder/singer-songwriter Tjinder Singh, who takes defiant pride in his Indian heritage in the face of being called a wog on public streets. Indeed, he’s flipped the script by using that “wog” in more than one song title (e.g., “First Wog on the Moon”). And Indian music has informed his work; one of the finest cuts from Woman’s Gotta Have It is “6am Jullandar Shere,” which he sings in Punjabi. He also sang in Punjabi on Cornershop’s cover of “Norwegian Wood.”
Cornershop’s LPs have always been shambolic affairs—not lo-fi exactly, but hardly slick studio affairs. This has lent the band’s albums an immediacy you won’t find otherwise amongst the bands on the late nineties’ Britpop scene, and such is the case with England Is a Dream. Unlike the band’s old Britpop contemporaries Cornershop would sound as home playing in your living room as they would at Glastonbury. Cornershop’s shoes may not shine, but they make for very pleasant walking.
England Is a Dream opens with the infectious pop garage rocker “St. Marie Under Canon,” a Hammond organ-drenched drum stomper that recalls both The Monkees and Bob Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn”—which Cornershop has covered. If this one doesn’t make you giddy you’re a real git, and it’s followed by “Slingshot,” a lazy and altogether pleasant number that fronts the flute and Singh’s distorted vocals, with the organ and electric guitar wandering in later to add additional color.
“No Rock Save in Roll” is pure early seventies Rolling Stones, all fuzzed up and with a killer riff, to say nothing of some great female backing vocals. I’ve read it’s an homage to England’s Black Country, where Singh was born aside (debatably) heavy metal. I don’t know about the heavy metal part—the term was coined and bands that played what can only be described as heavy metal stalked the earth long before Birmingham’s Black Sabbath laid popular claim to the HM mantle.
On “Everywhere That Wog Army Roams” Singh once again appropriates the racial slur that’s hurled at British Asians, but the song is no rant—it’s a quite cheerful number, in fact. Still, there’s real anger—albeit cloaked in irony—when Singh sings, to the accompaniment of female backing vocalists and one happening trumpet, “Everywhere the wog army go/The police follow them.” Singh has more openly demonstrated his ire in non-musical terms; Cornershop once burned a picture of Morrissey—whose flirtations with the notorious racist and anti-immigration National Front and the far-right For Britain movement, to say nothing of his incendiary comments on the issue—outside the offices of his record label, EMI.
The Indian music influences on England Is a Dream aren’t nearly as pronounced as they are on most of Cornershop’s other albums, but on the flute-heavy and chipper “Highly Amplified,” Singh adds sitar and tabla and sings in Punjabi. That said, the song itself shows no trace of Indian influence, and the same goes for the instrumental title track. The tablas are there, but the song owes it debt to England’s Green and Pleasant Land, not New Delhi.
“Cash Money” is a shambolic, mid-tempo guitar rocker that ignores chorus and all of that other nonsense—it just rolls on and on. The guitar has crunch, the drums shuffle you gently along towards the exit, and if you’re like me you’ve definitely enjoyed the ride. “I’m a Wooden Soldier” is a straight-up T. Rex rocker featuring an old school guitar riff and lots of electronic hijinks, with some saxophone blurt coming in towards song’s close. At one point Singh sings “western roller,” and that “western” lets you know he knows who he is and where he belongs, Morrissey and his “England for the English” ilk be damned.
The groovy and irresistible pop rocker “One Uncareful Lady Owner” is the only song on the LP to put tabla and sitar front and center, although the electric guitar does a good bit of the heavy lifting. LP closer “The Holy Name” is a relaxed and very loose number that sounds like it’s being played in the comfort of somebody’s living room, and comes complete with the sounds of the guests, including one squalling infant and the chatter of children. The synthesizer is perky, a flute comes in and out, Singh is joined on vocals by a somewhat ragged choir (I believe they’re the Betty Laywood Primary School Parents Chorus & Canteen, slumming it). Toss in a guitar playing some lackadaisical licks, and the only things missing are the Aloo mutter and Bubble and Squeak.
England Is a Garden was Cornershop’s first proper album—2015’s Hold on It’s Easy consists of easy listening re-recordings of tracks from the band’s 1994 album Hold On It Hurts—in eight years, and it was worth the wait. Singh has made forays into other genres over the years—check out the electro-funk of 2002’s Handcream for a Generation—but England Is a Dream marks a return to his roots. Would I prefer it included Indian-music influenced classics along the lines of “Brimful of Asha” and “6am Jullandar Shere”? Sure. Is it as strong an album as Woman’s Gotta Have It or When I Was Born for the 7th Time? I don’t think so. But it stands up against both LPs, as well as such LPs as 2012’s Urban Turban and 2010’s Judy Sucked a Lemon for Breakfast, proving that, toss whatever slurs you will his way, Singh always comes out the winner, and a warrior to boot.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
