The Candid Cafe in Islington, swish north London, is commercially invisible. A dusty artisan building hidden behind Angel tube station, the low-ceilinged rectangular cafe bears paintings, threadbare throws hastily flung on sofas and the kind of wooden dining table Henry VIII would merrily scoff at, lit only by waxy candelabras beamed in from the mystical 1970s. "I like it because it's unexpected," marvels Cornershop's Tjinder Singh, sipping cappuccino with his life-long songwriting partner Ben Ayres. The sternfaced, female, 20-something staff , he adds cheerily, "tend to be really rude, we reckon they're all either actors or lesbians". He cocks an ear to a sound jiggling behind the counter. "Nice, isn't it," he smiles, "to hear a ukulele?"
Hidden, unexpected, spanning the centuries across several continents, and possibly manned by unemployed lesbian thespians, these premises suit Cornershop. After all, they're the agit-rock Brit-Asian "indie-dance" herberts who emerged in 1992 (alongside the furious riot grrrls) and became
unexpectedly famous via the nowclassic Brimful Of Asha, its Fatboy Slim remix capsizing Celine Dion's Titanic-sized howler My Heart Will Go On off the No 1 spot in 1998. In the year Britpop switched off its own life-support machine, Cornershop's life force grew global, gathering fervent fans in Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Jonathan Demme and George Clooney (and a friend in Noel Gallagher). Typically, they then disappeared into their other band, Clinton "and were told," muses the supernaturally softly spoken Tjinder, "we were mad, but Clinton did and still does well, especially in America". Cornershop are less mad, more art, life-long believers in freedom and non-believers in haste, compromise and desperation, taking seven years to bring us their inspirational new album, Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast (after 2002's magical Handcream For A Generation they were, notes Tjinder "spent"). These last seven years they've quietly done other things; working for Rough Trade records (Ben), creating and running their own label, Ample Play, and creating some more human beings (Tjinder is now dad to a three- and an eight-year-old, while Ben's children are now 11 and 15 ("I know," blinks Ben, "bonkers, isn't it?").
Judy… is an art-pop joy, merging rollicking glam rock with the absurd, the Asian and the singalong psychedelic via kids' TV and demented clarinets. "Seven is a good number for us," avers Tjinder, "it means completeness in India." Today, though, their sardonically perky souls are slightly perplexed; Tjinder is newly-returned from a Digital Britain conference on the future of the music industry which leaves mavericks like themselves – if they don't want to work "in the musical equivalent of the city" – financially and creatively marooned.
"There's no incentive for anyone to make music," he laments. "The procedure for artists to get any money hasn't changed since the 50s. And it has to change or, ultimately, it's the people who are the biggest hitters legally who will win out. The Man! Until the youth, whose job it is to kick some shit, lower the pyramid. So… hurry up kids! But I always think everything we do isn't for now, anyway. Or even for seven years' time. We met through a love of William Morris [the far-sighted 19th Century architect, artist, furniture maker, designer, writer and influential socialist] and this is very William Morris. He was trying to work with his own crafts within new technology – industrialism and machines – and we're still there, trying to balance artistic-ness and technology. William Morris was the turn of the last century, we're the turn of the next century. And we firmly believe it. Because we've got nothing else to keep our pants from falling down. This is the rope around our waists."
Ben: "We'll be walking round in monks' habits soon."
In 2009, Cornershop are almost wholly unique – lifetime achievers of the fully autonomous ideal, in a world unrecognisable to the one they emerged from in Leicester a bewildering 18 years ago. "Blur might be back," notes Tjinder, of a fellow troupe from the class of '91, "but at least the 90s had lineage, history and ideas. There's not much to be got from Simon Cowell's world." "I saw Ultravox listed to play with an exclamation mark at the end," adds Ben of the ongoing band reformation bedlam. "Ultravox! Maybe the typesetter was just, 'What?'" Back in the 90s you would've imagined, by now, there'd be a generation of Cornershop kids bounding through the musical atmosphere but there was only ever, considers Tjinder, "the Cricklewood Cornershop, who inaugurated after we'd done two London shows, right at the beginning". Their influence might be found, instead, in the filmic phenomenon Slumdog Millionaire which Tjinder loved. "The energy and the harshness of India really came through, it wasn't dumbeddown middle-class shit and I think we've touched on those aspects but typically Cornershop, with none of the glory." Eighteen months ago, Cornershop filmed bizarrely similar footage for their war-baiting single, The Roll Off Characteristics (Of History In The Making), featuring kids dancing in the Mumbai slums.
"I prefer calling it Bombay," decides Tjinder. "Mumbai, what's that? Which shows how old school this wog is really. And how British." Cornershop remain a profoundly British creation, still infused by British politics, the serenely sardonic Tjinder regarding David Cameron today as "a tosser". The Labour party fares even worse. "It's full of bastards, [David] Milliband is an idiot and Andy Burnham [health secretary] is a dick; he spoke at Digital Britain and knew nothing about it and to have Feargal Sharkey [also at Digital Britain, the former Undertones yodeller now being chief executive of UK Music] representing the government's view on how music should be, is ridiculous." Two BNP members elected to the European parliament, meanwhile, he's borderline indifferent to.
"Everyone hearing what they're saying is not a big problem really," he shrugs. While Gordon Brown he adores.
"I think Gordon Brown is a great man," he declares. "I think he handled the financial thing very well. He is an awkward chap. I'm an awkward chap. And if I had one eye I'd be a damn sight more awkward. But to come across as that strong after all that shit has hit you, I think we've got steel in that man. But I'd vote for the Greens, if only they had more presence than window stickers about recycled tea bags."
The 'Shop remain besotted with cultural possibilities, eulogising today on a comedy caper called Danny & His Balloons, a band named The Strange Boys and a curious group called The Rainbow Coloured Green Beans, "who only play in their front room". In 2009, then, they're carrying on as always, independently, while considering a request from Asda to use their abstract song title from 1994, Born Disco, Died Heavy Metal on a George-label T-shirt. They'll also complete a documentary film for their website, begun around 2003 and based on London's independent music scene, much of which no longer exists. "It was like a curse," cackles Tjinder. "But I wanted to catalogue it before it all went. I felt that wind of change. It's one benefit of having your breeches halfway down."
They sip the last of their cappuccinos.
"I'm just glad we've never had to pander to any unsavoury characters," decides gentleman Tjinder, gently. "Even though it's very difficult. We always have to start from zero. Sometimes less than zero. No rope at all. Naked. But then, this Digital Britain report might mean the artist is finally looked after. And then I'll have to apologise to Andy Burnham. And take my turban off to Feargal Sharkey, and that will be fucking hideous. But that's just looking positively, as I do."
• Cornershop play Heaven, London on 29 July
