Cornershop
Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast
(Ample Play)
Man, this new Cornershop album is great: summery and upbeat and full of the sort of rock’n’roll that Noel Gallagher and Primal Scream and all their kind appreciate, only because it’s Cornershop it doesn’t grate and it doesn’t feel hoary or clichéd, but resonates with FUN and LAUGHTER and KNOWING INTELLIGENCE.
The title track ‘Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast’ is cheeky and chirpy and full of Beatles harmonies and the odd Beatles reference (Jo-Jo, the song’s main character: the way the guitars are strummed and left to linger over tabla and killer off-kilter percussion). It doesn’t stop, but runs with the groove. It doesn’t stop but goes easily with the flow, throws in a few off-mic gospel harmonies simply because it feels like it, and the odd clarinet – is that clarinet? – link between the bluesy rock licks, and sun-laden groove. It’s like every dream record you wanted to hear when you were ill in bed with the ‘flu during the 70s (but of course never did), and every dream record you thought might be thrown up be attending rave festivals like Creamfields and Spike Island (but of course never did).
The mostly instrumental ‘Shut Southall Down’ disorientates, woozily.
The opening brace ‘Who Fingered Rock’n’Roll’ and ‘Soul School’ are rock solid stone grooves – the sort of stuff that Spiritualized and Mötley Crüe keep pretending they’re good at, but fail incessantly, the miserable-eyed bastards.
Man, this new Cornershop album is great: ‘Soul School’ recalls Cornershop’s mega UK hit ‘Brimful Of Asha’ some, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that, we all need to let loose and have ourselves a Dansette dance party with sitars and crazy-smart hooks and smart floral shirts once in a while. It’s been our music of choice for eight or nine months now (since its original release in the UK) and never fails to uplift, cheer, knock the morning up by a couple of notches. For the brass-feted ‘The Roll Off Characteristics (Of History In The Making)’ see what’s written above about ‘Who Fingered Rock’N’Roll’ and triple the way singer Tjinder carefully enunciates each syllable of the main line is a delight in itself. My wife informs me that she prefers the songs with a more obvious Asian influence (this one, for example: despite its clear roots in The Rolling Stones’ appallingly overrated Exile In Main Street) because she says it’s rare to hear such an influence within the pop songs she has access to. But actually, this song could almost have been an additional direction for Kevin Rowland’s Dexys Midnight Runners to take around about the time of second album Too-Rye-Ay (and smash hit ‘Come On Eileen’).
And so the album proceeds. There’s a brash Dylan cover, ‘The Mighty Quinn’, which could be the massive radio smash because it’s familiar and fun and (most crucially) rocks, but one hopes not because really every other song here is way more inventive and full of chutzpah.
And if you’re really wondering whether Cornershop can out-do every other last musician of their class (roughly early Britpop, circa the Oasis/Blur wars) then lose yourself and be immersed within the epic, 16-minute-long, gospel-flavoured groove ‘The Turned On Truth (The Truth Is Turned On)’ which is CRYING OUT for an old school Blaxploitation movie to re-emerge and attach itself to. Damn straight.
Everett True