Cornershop: Hold On It’s Easy review – playful easy-listening remake of their punky debut

The urge to reimagine your debut album as an instrumental, easy-listening affair with added swing is not perhaps one that strikes most bands, but Cornershop have always been something of a square peg. Their first album, Hold on It Hurts, was noisy and boisterous enough to take its place in the riot grrrl movement (despite the group’s all-male lineup); Hold On It’s Easy – which reworks every track from the 1993 original – is performed by Preston’s Elastic Big Band and would sound more at home as a 70s TV theme or, in the case of their woodwind and brass reworking of Change, Air’s Moon Safari. The original’s political side has naturally been dimmed, replaced with an impressive knack for revealing melodies you never knew existed beneath the feedback (Born Disco, Died Heavy Metal is a particular revelation). It might not make for the most essential listening of 2015, but Hold On It’s Easy is a playful distraction.