Cornershop – “No Rock: Save In Roll”
It’s been 22 years since Cornershop, the great Britpop-era genre-melters, scored an out-of-nowhere UK #1 with Fatboy Slim’s remix of “Brimful Of Asha.” And it’s been almost eight years since Cornershop released Hold On It’s Easy, their most recent album. So it’s cool to learn that Cornershop, a band that many of us remember fondly, is planning a big return.
Next year, Cornershop will follow up Hold On It’s Easy with a new album called England Is A Garden. As with so many things that that Cornershop do, that title and cover art are both loaded comments on the nature of British identity and on who gets to claim it. But the first single is more of a straight-up ass-kicker.
“No Rock: Save In Roll,” the first track we’ve heard from England Is A Garden, has a Stones-y guitar riff and a funky tumble of drums. It’s Cornershop doing Primal Scream — specifically the Primal Scream era when Primal Scream were doing the Stones. Maybe there’s some complexity to the lyrics that I haven’t figured out yet, but right now, at least to me, it’s just a big and sunny rock song. Check it out below.
England Is A Garden is out 3/6 on Ample Play Records.