V2. / Bmg
2002
Handcream For A Generation
About This Album
First things first -- this is hardly the song-intensive, globe-tripping platter When I Was Born for the 7th Time was. Handcream for a Generation is a record that finds its tone and grooves, even as it segues from post-Beck sonic collages to boogie rock to endless jams. No matter how they dabble in different styles, it never affects the foundation, it's just highlights. Strangely enough, for all the dance, techno, and hip-hop here -- all the club-culture clashes careening off the tracks (they obviously learned from their 2000 detour side project, Clinton) -- Handcream's predominant spirit is that of post-Brit-pop, hard-boogieing trad rock. Tjinder Singh publicly derided this sound in 1997, but his subsequent friendship with Noel Gallagher must have affected him on a deep level, since Noel not only lays down guitar on the 14-minute psych epic "Spectral Mornings," he hauls out former Oasis bassist Paul McGuigan for "Lessons Learned From Rocky I to Rocky III"; adopts Gallagher's guitar sound throughout the record; and winds up with a record that is hipper, looser, and funkier than Be Here Now, but weirdly reminiscent of it all the same. Perhaps this is what happens when British bands stretch into contemporary psychedelia, mixing all the past into the present -- they wind up with a record that is pretty entertaining in how it flits from sound to style, all with a sly wink and loving, exacting replication of production techniques, all married to beats that are surely contemporary, but contemporary club beats are often built on the past anyway, giving the whole thing a weird but appealing out-of-phase feel.
Track List (try track 4)

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