CD REVIEW Jarvis Cocker-Jarvis

It's been 24 years since Pulp's first album and more than a decade since "Common People" was a Brit-Pop phenomonon, but Jarvis Cocker has finally released a solo album. Far from his art-damaged work with his old band, the man who mooned Michael Jackson on national television has found a second life as a pop craftsman. And this album might be his best. Different Class was a party of a record and This is Hardcore was a fascinatingly bottomless pit, but neither work balanced melody and wit so cunningly.
In short, this is the kind of record that Elvis Costello should be making. After a short piano introduction, the album proper begins with "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" in which Jarvis offers biased advice with the help of a snappy slide guitar hook. On two off his catchiest tracks, he deconstructs pop history by tackling Spector on "Black Magic" and Motown on "Baby's Coming Back to Me." "From Auschwitz to Ipswhich" is a chilling track warning against the conservative paranoia of England's immigrant population. "Evil comes from I know not where," he sings "but if you take a look inside yourself maybe you'll find it there."
The quintessential track on the album though is the deceptively simple "I Will Kill Again," in which a narrator calmly describes being bored to death by a life of classical music and healthy living. You can almost see the glimmer in Jarvis' eye when he croons the title line. This aging rocker may not be a serial killer, but he has some interesting wrenches to toss in the works of the expectations of a middle age.


9/10

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