Woman's Gotta Have It

As their name suggests, Cornershop (slang for Indian-owned grocery stores in Britain), features a musical hybrid of the band's East meets West influences. Their sophomore stab, WOMAN'S GOTTA HAVE IT, is one of the most original and innovative albums of 1995. The band started in 1992 as a hardcore group called General Havoc, when brothers Tjinder and Avtar Singh and their best friend Ben Ayers were still in college.
Their music ranges from Velvet Underground-styled garage/guitar-based rock sung in English ("Hong Kong Book Of Kung Fu", and "Call All Destroyer"), to traditional Indian music that's chanted in Hindi and backed by sitar, dohiki and tablas ("6 A.M. Jullander Shere", and "My Dancing Days Are Done"). Often, the orchestration is updated with synthesizer, dance beats and samples giving the music it's own unique identity. Their best songs, however, combine the two disparate influences: "Camp Orange" samples tribal chanting over trip-hop beats, while the poppier "Wog" combines Ovation-like guitar strumming, tribal chanting and lyrics sung in both English and Hindi. On "Wog", Tjinder sums up the underlying premise of this original sounding album: "This western Oriental's going full circle".|

Tjinder Singh's Cornershop has created the perfect hybrid of Western indie rock and swirling Eastern traditional music: Hindi-pop. It's not like what the Beatles did with sitars nor is it classifiable as worldbeat: Cornershop is unique. "Jullandar Shere" opens and closes the album on an Eastern note but with a hip-hop twist. It's an adventure in lo-fi noise pop with the drone of tamboura, native percussion, and processed vocal sung in Punjabi providing the rhythm. "Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu" conveys indignation through its angry guitar and spit-sung lyrics. "Call All Destroyer" has Singh leading on funky bass like old-school political rockers Gang of Four. The anti-melodies are similar to stock indie rock, but the sonic dissonance created on dholki, harmonium, and flute separates Cornershop from the pack as they reclaim a racial stereotype (that every Asian in Great Britain tends a corner shop) while creating their very own roots music with a message. ~ Denise Sullivan