Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis

Mon 20th Nov, 2006 in Music Reviews

Jarvis Cocker will stop taking the piss on the same day hell freezes over. It’s in his blood. From his days in Pulp during the 1990s to his Relaxed Muscle project this side of the Y2K, Cocker has always had someone or something to make fun of.

And Jarvis, Cocker’s first solo release, is no different. Blending his dry, sarcastic sense of humour with vivid imagery of society in modern-day Britain, Cocker manages to find the formula that put Pulp’s Different Class and This is Hardcore up there with the most noteworthy albums of the Britpop era.

Musically, Jarvis achieves nothing that Pulp did not. If anything, the glam-meets-britpop sound of Cocker’s former band makes way for more generic pop-rock with the occasional smattering of punk (Fat Children), the 1980s (From A to I) and even adult contemporary (Loss Adjuster, I Will Kill Again). But an hour of this man’s social commentary was always going to be priceless, even if it was spoken word.

As was to be expected, Jarvis is packed from start to finish full of all the things that made Cocker the coolest man in Sheffield in 1995. Not only is it the words themselves, but the delivery of the man’s vocals make this record priceless. The words flow as though Cocker is engaged in a full-scale conversation with himself, going off on tangents before returning to finish his story off. ”The police force was elsewhere,” he tells us in Fat Children, “putting bullets in some guy’s head for no particular reason”. But instead of coming across like any other anti-establishment anthem, this is just all part of one of Cocker’s nights out.

While Cocker’s storytelling style previously centred around a day in the life of a geezer, a geezer’s night out and the morning after, Jarvis leaves the hedonism of the Britpop years far behind. Instead, the 13 tracks (not counting the bonus track – more on that later) repeatedly deal with themes of getting old and stale, life in the suburbs and finding one’s place in the world. But don’t let that put you off - Cocker’s trademark take-the-piss attitude is at its best when you add self-parody to the mix.

If the 13 tracks listed on the back of Jarvis weren’t clear enough, your IQ probably sits somewhere in the domain of single figures. But just for you, secret track Running the World puts it in black and white: c*nts are still running the world.