Cornershop: When I Was Born For The 7th Time

With traditional Indian instruments, pop-song structures, hip hop-style samples, looped beats, and appearances by Allen Ginsberg and Tarnation's Paula Frazer, there's a lot thrown into the mix on Cornershop's new When I Was Born For The 7th Time, and not a lot that doesn't sound like it belongs there. Songwriter/producer/vocalist Tjinder Singh makes almost everything work, possibly because the music always sounds like it's striving to make the circuitous connections between different musical forms and the cultures associated with them. As the closing cover of The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," sung in Punjabi, reminds us, Western rock and Eastern music have met before, but it's most often a case of Western artists discovering Eastern music shortly before making it conform to their style. English-born and of Indian descent, Singh takes a different, more generous and inclusive approach. In fact, it's when Cornershop's music sounds most like traditional alt-rock ("Funky Days Are Back Again," "Good Shit") that the album is at it's weakest: Singh's voice and sensibility sound constrained. When his group is expansive and daring, allowing generic and cultural distinctions to simply melt away—and that's most of the time—it's at its best. And when it's at its best, Cornershop sounds like the future of music. Some of the extended tracks that highlighted 1995's Woman's Gotta Have It have unfortunately disappeared, but if this makes When I Was Born For The 7th Time more accessible, it only increases the likelihood that more people will pick up one of the best albums of the year.