Cornershop - Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast

8.5 - England - 2009

A late, but solid, entry in Cornershop's discography, one that comes seven years after its predecessor, Handcream For A Generation. What's striking about this self-released effort, however, is that it dials back the free-wheeling eclectism of previous Cornershop albums and is, more or less, a straightforward classic rock record. Indeed, for a Cornershop album, Judy Sucks A Lemon... is actually quite radical in its traditionalism. There a couple of brief, disco-y interludes and the exotic electronica of "Chamchu", but the rest of the album plays as something such tradrock stalwarts as Ocean Colour Scene dreamed of making. Of course, this being Cornershop, the results are a thousand times more interesting than their long forgotten Britpop peers (and there is lots of sitar throughout, but that's more or less been fully appropriated by post-Harrison rock, right?).

Indeed, the very "ordinariness" -- and I don't mean that in any negative way -- is itself quite strange. Like, they cover Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn", and whereas the version of "Norwegian Wood" (sung in Hindi!) on When I Was Born For The Seventh Time was presumably intended as a bit of a send-up of the Beatles' orientalism ("reclaiming looted uniforms", perhaps?), this one is startlingly faithful to the pseudo-original Manfred Mann version. Personally, though I always likes me some "Mighty Quinn", I'd've preferred they included their top-shelf cover of the Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset".

Of further bafflement is the 16 minute gospel number that closes out the album. There's something inexplicably bizarre about a post-modern, ostensibly secular, trans-ethnic band like Cornershop having a gospel choir sing "Jesus did a lot to please us, redeem us" without even the merest trace of irony. Perhaps it's some comment on how, not unlike the sitar, Black American gospel music has been so thoroughly appropriated by (White) rock and roll that it now fully enmeshed in the cultural esperanto. Or maybe, like their near-peers Spiritualized, they just dig the sound as more fodder for their roving eclecticism.

Elsewhere, there's some nice clarinet that crops up in a few places, notably the title track. Opener "Who Fingered Rock And Roll" marries a typically great title with a rather derivative riff in the tradition of "Lessons Learned From From Rocky I To Rocky III". Finally, "The Roll Off Characteristics (Of History In The Making)" is a stellar standout that captures the 'Shop at their most sloganeering. Keep up the good work, gents.