The buzzwords that tend to swirl around Cornershop-- multiculturalism, fusion, politics-- can make the band seem overly earnest and academic. The truth is, this is one profoundly and proudly silly band. But absurdity is ultimately Cornershop's greatest virtue: They may have made their name in the mid-1990s with a heady, cosmopolitan concoction of psychedelia, old-school funk, and mantric Punjabi folk, but their music also makes room for 1970s boogie-rock, cornball country, and vocoderized robo-disco. And in Tjinder Singh, the band possess an eminently witty wordsmith who can undercut big, insurmountable issues like globalization, racism, and cultural hegemony through droll character studies and wry satire-- and, in the process, generate some of the greatest song titles in recent memory.
But since reemerging from an extended hiatus in 2009, the band have forsaken cut-and-paste pastiche in favor of holistic consistency: Comeback effort Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast placed a premium on classic-rock accessibility, complete with a cover of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn"; 2011's Cornershop and the Double 'O' Groove Of applied the silken vocals of Punjabi singer Bubbley Kaur to a set of mellow-golden funk. Urban Turban, however, is a far more fragmented experience by its very design: six of its 12 tracks originally debuted over the past year through the band's online Singhles Club, most of which saw the band backing up a mostly unknown, international cast of vocalists. Think of Urban Turban as a more modest, less bloody, but equally playful version of The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.
Cornershop do attempt to impose some structure on Urban Turban's piecemeal tracklist by pegging the charming, interactive children's song "What Did the Hippie Have In His Bag?" (a "Brimful of Asha" for the pre-school set) as the opener and as a late-album reprise. These bookends account for Singh's lone lead-vocal appearances on the album, and what transpires in between hews closer to Singh and partner Ben Ayres' 1999 disco-funk diversion Clinton than any previous Cornershop album. But even with the revolving-door mic policy and ping-ponged stylistic shifts, Cornershop's irreverent approach to agit-pop is easy to detect: "Who's Gonna Lite It Up?"-- featuring a hot and bothered performance from Parisian vocalist Izzy Lindqwister-- issues its riot-starting directive through a seductive, Betty Davis-worthy funk, and the band gives a buoyant, "Tighten Up"-style soul workout the urban-blighting title of "Concrete, Concrete". Even the aforementioned "Hippie" leads its kiddie chorus to a rather dispiriting life lesson: "Now that we've climbed the mountain/ The mountain will never seem the same again."
One can't help but relate that line to Cornershop's fleeting ascendancy to the Top of the Pops, and how the experience only seemed to further entrench the band's contrarian qualities, resulting in exploratory side projects and an increasingly sporadic, career-suicidal release schedule. But as the third Cornershop release in four years on the band's own Ample Play imprint, Urban Turban feels especially emblematic of a band that's fully liberated itself from any commercial or audience expectations and shifted its experimental ethos into overdrive, bouning from Daft Punkian Franco-disco ("Non-Stop Radio") to wonderfully wiggy Punjabi-sung sci-fi funk ("Inspector Bamba Singh's Lament") to digital dub ("First Wog on the Moon").
As to be expected from an album of one-off collaborations, some Urban Turban cuts struggle to stretch a basic idea into a fully realized song, like the annoyingly repetitious French-touch house of "Solid Gold" and the all-too aptly titled "Milkin' It", an endless stream of shout outs to old-school MCs-- courtesy of guest In the Light of Aquarius-- that sounds like some murky throwaway track from the Ill Communication sessions. (Though this Canadian reviewer is grateful for the Maestro Fresh Wes name-drop.) But then there are songs you wish they'd ride out forever, like the lovely "Something Makes You Feel Like", featuring a restless, blearly-eyed vocal turn by French singer Soko that's offset by an easy-going "Sweet Jane" groove; it serves as a reminder that, for all their genre-blurring, pan-cultural cred, Cornershop can also be an excellent Velvet Underground cover band. "Something makes you feel like/ The grass is greener on the other side," Soko sings, before adding, "but there is no other side." Of course, that's just Cornershop being cheeky again: 15 years on from their one and only pop hit, and three years into a remarkably prolific second phase, Cornershop are clearly enjoying life on the other side.
