Live Report: Cornershop
It was a toss-up as to which was the more fascinating experience:
hearing Cornershop cast their gentle spell of Punjab-flavored pop,
hip-hop grooves and psychedelic drones last Sunday afternoon; or
watching the band perform outdoors amid wood chips, mulch and skate
kids who were inexplicably attracted to the idea of scaling the
high, scrawny trees planted in front of the stage.
Cornershop seemed a tad out of place at this local rock radio
station’s all-day festival (the skateboard half-pipe set up a dozen
yards away certainly didn’t add anything to the mellow atmosphere
the band was trying to conjure). Then again, perhaps environment
had little to do with singer Tjinder Singh’s demeanor. Some nine
hours later, playing in front of a packed, crimson-lit club crowd
at midnight, Singh managed, somehow, to look just as ill at
ease.
It’s a good thing the music was a lot warmer and relaxed — and,
frankly, a lot more interesting — than Singh’s stoic, even
indifferent, on-stage persona. Uttering nary a word to the
audience, Singh stepped up to the mic at the outset of the band’s
sixty-minute club set and leaned into “Sleep On the Left Side” from
Cornershop’s breakthrough second album, When I Was Born For The
7th Time. That tune, built on a foundation of Brill Building
pop, glued together with dollops of chunky percussion, and
ornamented with exotic (at least by American mainstream rock
standards) instrumentation, showcased the luscious, alluring beauty
of the band’s music. Old School and New Style bubbled up from the
band’s shambling grooves like vintage wax and melted into a
blissed-out amalgam of bedroom indie-pop and streetcorner
scratching.
Cornershop further hooked the audience with a faithful cover of
the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” sung in Punjabi, and a spirited
reading of their infectious, retro-radio hit, “Brimful of Asha.”
Like all great pop moments, the latter song (named after Indian
model/singer Asha Bhosle) suggested, rather than spelled out, a
stream of luminous images and memories. When Singh strummed his
acoustic guitar and toasted the names of all those old record
labels (“Ardent Records — 45! Trojan Records — 45!”), the tune
sounded like the Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll” by way of
“Sweet Jane.” Later, the band stretched the sitar-laden “We’re In
Yr Corner,” with its propulsive rhythms and rustling chimes, into a
loping, languid jam that slipped, first, into the stop ‘n’ scratch
instrumental “Butter The Soul,” then crashed jubilantly into “Good
Shit.”
Come to think of it, with song titles like those, there was
really no need for Singh to say anything (besides, does anybody
ever really need to hear the canned rock star query “hey, how you
doin’ out there” again?). The music spoke eloquently for itself,
and titles like “Good Shit” pretty much summed up what Cornershop
were doing.