When I Was Born for the 7th Time

1	Sleep on the Left Side 4:06
2	Brimful of Asha 5:17
3	Butter the Soul 3:19
4	Chocolat 1:24
5	We're in Yr Corner 5:47
6	Funky Days Are Back Again 3:41
7	What Is Happening? 2:15
8	When the Light Appears Boy / Allen Ginsberg 2:41
9	Coming Up 1:03
10	Good Shit 4:40
11	Good to Be on the Road Back Home 5:45
12	It's Indian Tobacco My Friend 4:51
13	Candy Man 3:49
14	State Troopers, Pt. 1 3:07
15	Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 2:27

Barnes & Noble

After several years of fusing traditional Indian musical elements with indie rock, Cornershop turned to the more groove driven world of deejay music and classic pop and created a masterpiece. The big hit, "Brimful of Asha," reflects RUBBER SOUL through an Anglo-Indian upbringing and went to number one on the British charts. And in case you missed the Beatles reference they close the recording with a sly cover of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" sung in Punjabi. The deejay tracks effectively capture the dislocations and humorous ironies of the second-generation immigrant life. Cornershop has spent its career wrestling with the dynamic of otherness; here, they make it into a profound musical statement. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

When I Was Born for the 7th Time is a remarkable leap forward for Cornershop, the place where the group blends all of their diverse influences into a seamless whole. Cornershop uses Indian music as a foundation, finding its droning repetition similar to the trancier elements of electronica, the cut-and-paste collages of hip-hop, and the skeletal melodicism of indie pop. Tying all of these strands together, the band creates a multicultural music that is utterly modern; it is conscious of its heritage, but instead of being enslaved to tradition, it pushes into the future and finds a common ground between different cultures and musics. Like Woman's Gotta Have It, large portions of When I Was Born for the 7th Time are devoted to hypnotic instrumentals, but the music here is funkier and fully realized. Cornershop hits an appealing compromise between detailed arrangements and lo-fi technology. There may be cheap keyboards and drum machines scattered throughout the album, but they are used as sonic texturing, similar to the turntables, synthesizers, samplers, sitars, and guitars that drive the instrumentals punctuating the full-fledged songs. When it chooses, Cornershop can write hooky, immediate pop songs -- "Sleep on the Left Side" and "Brimful of Asha" are wonderful pop singles, and "Good to Be on the Road Back Home" is an impressive, country-tinged tale -- but what makes When I Was Born for the 7th Time such a rich, intoxicating listen is that it balances these melodic tendencies with deceptively complex arrangements, chants, drones, electronic instrumentals, and funky rhythms, resulting in an album that becomes better with each listen. Stephen Thomas Erlewine