Jarvis Cocker - Further Complications Review

In Pulp, Jarvis Cocker was a Brit-pop rake who could dissect the English class system and sound suave doing it. Fast-forward 10 years, and he's a somewhat less suave, middle-aged beard jockey on a never-ending quest for twentysomething ass. Produced by Steve Albini, Cocker's excellent second solo disc sets hilariously over-the-top come-ons to bruising garage rock and woozy soul — on "Leftovers" he tries to sex up a foxy paleontologist, on "Angela" he goes after a girl who's "nearly 23/making $4.50 an hour" and who offers a complimentary shower. The corker is "I Never Said I Was Deep," where he informs, "I'm not looking for a relationship/Just a willing receptacle." Hard to believe the guy's single....full text Further Complications is the second proper solo record from Jarvis Cocker since disbanding his long-time outfit Pulp around 2002, and it ranks among the very best output of his career. Eleven tracks of surprisingly forceful rock from a man more known for a sonorous mumble than rock and roll screams, it’s easily Cocker’s most satisfying album since 1998’s This Is Hardcore. Turning up the volume on his band, courtesy of producer Steve Albini, seems to have been just what Cocker needed to shake off enough ennui to write and record a charmingly lecherous album about being terribly beset with ennui.

It’s just what a Pulp fan wants from Cocker, who etched out a space for himself on the ‘90s Britpop canvas as jaded elder statesmen, singing about jealousy, infidelity, and the inadequacies of himself and everyone around him. With the release of 2001’s We Love Life, a down-tempo record of country-influenced songs that sounded like someone confronting a desire to never make music again, and instead making a record about not wanting to make music any more, it became apparent that world-weariness was more than a pose for Cocker. Not long after the album’s release, Pulp broke up, and Cocker decamped to Paris with his wife. That seemed to be that....full text At first, hearing Steve Albini's production of Jarvis Cocker's excellent new album is like finding out that your beloved aunt, the one who introduced you to Fellini and Wilde, had a fling with your favorite science teacher, the one who showed you how to explode sulfur in a tub of water. You love them both for completely different reasons and kind of wish they had never crossed paths.

Neither Cocker's chewy structures nor his voice's subtle shadings are particularly well suited to Albini's you-are-there engineering. Fortunately, this collection of surging and reeling tunes is the former Pulp frontman's strongest since Different Class. Tall, bearded, and suavely funny, dude still has a mighty tight pimp game; you just have to listen more closely to appreciate how tight that game is. Distorted chordings open the title track as Cocker delivers panicked aphorisms ("Your life is just a carrier bag!"), while "Pilchard" gives Jarvis the guitar blowout we never knew he wanted....full text