Cornerstone - 'Head Over Heels'

In the good old days, MTV would have loved this band.

"An emerging, ambitious Austrian band, marking the calming influence in between the prevailing Pop-Mainstream and the rebellious riot produced by the revived Britpop movement" claims Cornerstone's biography. I don’t know what images that conjures up to you, but in truth the material on ‘Head Over Heels’ is a collection of very pleasant, well played, nicely produced radio friendly rock; trippy, laid-back music for a long drive on a summer’s day. For those of a certain age, the closest comparison I can come up with would be Suze DeMarchi’s Baby Animals of the early Nineties.

There’s nothing wrong with ‘Head Over Heels’, but there’s not a great deal to get excited about either. Anja Schirmer (vocals), Stefan Wachelhofer (guitar), Michael Wachelhofer (bass) and Hannah Wachter (drums) are undoubtedly a talented bunch, and it would be nice to hear them put the pedal to the metal to see what they can do. To be fair, as the CD progresses ‘Changed’ and to a lesser extent ‘Something In The Way’ do get the party started, but the rest of the eleven cuts on offer could quite happily be on heavy rotation on American radio: in the good old days, MTV would have loved this band.



Bizarrely for something so radio orientated, the CD boasts two bonus cuts over the eleven, U.S, radio versions of ‘Regret’ and ‘Fade Away’ which up the running order without really adding anything to the album itself.

John Tucker