Handcream for a Generation by Cornershop

Handcream for a Generation, Cornershop's fourth album, came out on Wiiija on 1 April 2002, five years on from When I Was Born for the 7th Time. In between, the band sat out most of 1998's touring while Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres spun records as DJs and made an album as Clinton, and that side project's electro-funk leaks all over this one. Singh produced it himself, with Rob Swift co-producing two tracks, over sessions at West Orange Studios in Preston and Eastcote Studios in London that ran from mid-2000 to June 2001.

The result is a magpie's nest: sitar and tabla rubbing up against guitars with a Noel Gallagher swagger, the soul-funk of "Heavy Soup" at both ends, "Music Plus 1" doing its best Daft Punk and "Spectral Mornings" drifting into psychedelia. Critics mostly liked it. But after the second single, "Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform", came out as "Staging" and the band played Reading and Leeds, the label let them go that October.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.