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Sound Advice #3: 

Cornershop – When I Was Born For The 7^th Time (1997)

Let’s start at the beginning.

It’s a hot July afternoon in 1993 and my 13-year-old self and a school chum have just walked through the gates of a free music festival taking place in the grounds of a stately home in Nottingham. It’s my first proper gig (I say ‘proper’ because my first gig was actually East 17 earlier that same year, but I won’t tell if you won’t) and we’re looking forward to seeing a ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’-era Blur later, even though they’re not deemed big enough to headline (that honour goes to textbook crusties Back To The Planet). 

Walking past the stately home in question, we head down the hill towards the deep, bass-heavy rumble emanating from the huge tent at the bottom. I can’t yet make out the song being performed inside but as we get closer I recognise the people on stage: Cornershop.

Just two EPs into their career at this point (the excellent ‘In The Days Of Ford Cortina’ and ‘Lock, Stock and Double-Barrel’), the band make deliciously raw post-punk noise-pop reminiscent of The Jesus and Mary Chain. To the side of the stage sits a sitar player, his delicately plucked notes piercing through the dense wall of feedback and crashing drums, seemingly out of place and yet also making perfect sense. It’s chaotic, it’s noisy… and obviously brilliant. To a 13-year-old in a Nirvana T-shirt whose dad will be picking him up at the end of the night, it’s nothing short of a revelation.

The kids down at the front in long-sleeved T-shirts are going wild, naturally. Immediately in front of me, a middle-aged guy sporting a trilby, leather jacket and rucksack leans casually on one of the tent poles, arms folded, swinging his head from side to side in time to each alternate beat as he surveys the swarming moshpit ahead of him – he’s been there, done that, but he’s still having fun.

Looking back, though, one thing is clear: no one in that tent, not even the band, would have predicted that five years later Cornershop would be performing live on Top of the Pops, having scored a number one single. From the very start, the band were unashamedly outspoken and direct in their approach: the name ‘Cornershop’ referenced an all-too-familiar stereotype still prevalent in Britain today, as did the fact they pressed their debut EP on ‘curry-coloured’ vinyl. Their first Melody Maker feature in late ’92 saw them burning a Morrissey poster outside EMI’s offices (Moz’s label at the time) in disgust at the singer’s disastrously ill-conceived flirtation with far-right imagery. They were also notable for being the only all-male band to be embraced by the Riot Grrrl movement. In short, they weren’t about to compromise their politics and principles for anyone.

The original line-up burning the Morrissey poster in late 1992

Fast forward to 1997 – Cornershop now have two albums under their belts in the shape of 1994’s ‘Hold On It Hurts’ and 1995’s ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’. Both great, but destined to remain cult classics – although the latter did offer a tantalising glimpse of a more funk-tinged direction, as did a handful of low-key 12” releases from side project Clinton, indicating that Cornershop were starting to outgrow their earlier sound.

If ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’ laid the foundations for a more dance-orientated direction then ‘When I Was Born For The 7^th Time’ represented the crystallisation of those ideas, achieving the simultaneous feat of being both their most experimental and accessible work to date. It felt like everything had now fallen into place: here was a band who had found their niche.

‘Sleep On The Left Side’ still feels like a strong choice of opening track, with its hip hop beats (one of several tracks co-produced by Dan The Automator) and earworm melodies setting the scene for the next hour’s musical journey. ‘Brimful Of Asha’ you already know, of course, but it’s important to remember that this is the original, definitive version, with its warm, reassuring, bluesy guitars building up to a truly gorgeous string-filled climax. I always felt that the Norman Cook remix stripped away a lot of the original song’s soul, but maybe that’s just me?  

‘Butter The Soul’ is one of several (largely instrumental) hip hop-influenced numbers peppered throughout the album, alongside ‘Chocolat’, ‘Coming Up’, ‘It’s Indian Tobacco My Friend’, ‘Candyman’ (featuring vocals from Justin Warfield) and ‘State Troopers’, showing just how far the band’s music had evolved in the two years since their previous album. It’s fair to say some of these pieces wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Mo’Wax compilation, which is certainly no bad thing.  

‘We’re In Yr Corner’ feels like a logical progression from ‘6am Jullandar Shere’ from ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’, with Tjinder Singh’s Punjabi vocals sounding like a rallying cry soaring over a sitar-drenched accompaniment. ‘Good Shit' (renamed 'Good Ships' for its single release) and ‘Funky Days Are Back Again’ show Cornershop at their most funky, demonstrating that it’s possible to write decent songs for listeners AND dancers.

‘What Is Happening?’ is an experimental sound collage, layering snatches of spoken word samples (creating a ‘channel-surfing’ effect), scratching and space-age sounds over hypnotic, bubbling dhol rhythms interspersed with affirmative handclaps. ‘When The Light Appears Boy’, meanwhile, features Allen Ginsberg (who died just five months before the album’s release) reading one of his poems while what appears to be a street carnival takes place outside (you half expect Ginsberg to stop reading and stick his head out of the window to tell them to keep it down).

Country and folk influences are also present and correct in the form of ‘Good To Be On The Road Back Home Again’ (featuring Paula Frazer) and a quirky and genuinely wonderful Punjabi language cover of ‘Norwegian Wood’, which closes the album.

Next year will mark two decades since ‘When I Was Born For The 7^th Time’ was released – the same age that ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’, ‘Low’ and ‘Trans-Europe Express’ were in 1997.

Nearly 20 years later, ‘When I Was Born For The 7^th Time’ is still a record worth talking about and, more importantly, listening to.