Artists
Biography
In 2007, Jarvis Cocker stopped writing songs for other people to deliver the first solo album of his 25 year career. Along the way he roped in Richard Hawley, Steve Mackey (ex-Pulp) and Fat Trucker Ross Orton to be his band, quit table tennis, “master” the piano and learned to stop worrying and love the bomb… or maybe not quite.
‘Jarvis’ is a both a thoughtful and thought-provoking record, shot through with lavish beauty, dark humour, satire - both subtle and savage - and a genuine and much-missed sense of Northern conviction. The songs seem to exist on a sometimes-delicately-balanced-sometimes-swinging scale between sentiment and cold-eyed analysis, each distinguished by the unmistakable (and never better) voice of our lanky protagonist.
Unease and disquiet permeate ‘Jarvis’. And whatever else we may speculate about the effects of marriage, family and the laying to rest of Pulp on Jarvis’s constitution, it seems safe to say they’ve not mellowed him. At the heart of the record an extraordinary cache of songs display a writer of unparalleled deftness of touch, even by his own previous standards.
‘Jarvis’ is a both a thoughtful and thought-provoking record, shot through with lavish beauty, dark humour, satire - both subtle and savage - and a genuine and much-missed sense of Northern conviction. The songs seem to exist on a sometimes-delicately-balanced-sometimes-swinging scale between sentiment and cold-eyed analysis, each distinguished by the unmistakable (and never better) voice of our lanky protagonist.
Unease and disquiet permeate ‘Jarvis’. And whatever else we may speculate about the effects of marriage, family and the laying to rest of Pulp on Jarvis’s constitution, it seems safe to say they’ve not mellowed him. At the heart of the record an extraordinary cache of songs display a writer of unparalleled deftness of touch, even by his own previous standards.