eestone's Full Review: Handcream For a Generation by Cornershop
Funky rhymes, dope sounds, rip- roaring, head- boppin, booty rockin', boom boxes: these are a few of my favorite things. You too? There's a certain soft spot people have for retro and The Hip, maybe a need for it- we love afros, the A-Team, Night Ranger, and Punky Brewster and when new fools can embrace past cheese and turn it into art, make it fun, when they do it right- find that balance of genre, culture, style and love... now that's a beautiful thing, my friends.
CORNERSHOP's new collection is a happy meal of an album that throws in little chunks of everything: we get a collage of funktified musical arrangements from hip hop to reggae to sitar drones to static fuzz. It's all over the map, basically contentless but consistent: the songs have catch phrases that mean nothing, yet are irresistible because of the vibe, the coolness, the sheer joy of being irrelevant, catch phrases thrown by an invisible hand, sourceless in a sea of world sounds.
I think Cornershop, Beck, and Moby are the standouts this new genre, which may be called Post Modern Junk Funk.
This album, as well as the superior "When I Was Born For the 7th Time" deserve to be heard. Moby's "Play" deserves to be heard, and "Odelay" by Beck- and Bjork even and "Kid A"--these works are new, they're then and now and around the world and a step ahead of the rest. The information age may have cluttered us, overwhelmed us, but music has thrived, branched out.
The movies haven't, I don't think (except for 'Pulp Fiction'), a collage makes the eyes sick, MTV and that mess. Books on the other hand have been far out for a long time, breaking the form, encompassing more, challenging the senses- check out "Finnigan's Wake" by James Joyce for the ultimate example of sensory expansion (60 languages combine to make a new one) And check out this Cornershop- cause I think they got The Hip.
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