Been a pretty quick (scarily quick even) 12 months, but with the benefit of a bit of time, has anyone changed their minds much on Jarvis' last record? It certainly received the most mixed reviews of any Jarvis lp in a long time.

Personally, I maintain that it contains four songs worthy of the best he's ever written. Namely 'I Never Said I Was Deep', 'Leftovers', 'Hold Still' and (on a rung below perhaps) 'You're In My Eyes'. There is a fifth, but for reasons only he can give, 'Girls Like It Too', didn't make it onto the record...and barely came out at all (vinyl only until it was given a digital release too).

Unfortunately, the album versions of Never Said...and Leftovers still leave me frustrated - the quiet and too self-consciously enunciated vocals during the verses, and in the case of the former, the dull, staid-sounding harmony vocals and those fucking horns during the chorus! Christ, Albini = a live, stripped-down sound. Or so we were told. Maybe it was Jarvis' idea. Anyway, I've long since taken to eschewing the official version to listening to the rawness of its live debut performance from Shepherds Bush and/or the cleaner studio sound of the in-session rendition from Marc Riley's 6Music show. Both, particularly Jarvis' vocals in the former, sound fantastic.
Similarly with Leftovers, I tend to stick with the session version from the Radcliffe & Maconie Radio 2 show.

As for the rest of the album, the throwaway nature of so many songs (Angela, Pilchards, Fuckingsong, even Further Complications and Caucasion Blues) succeed in making the album fun. Instead of being an album solely to admire, which We Love Life and Jarvis were too often in danger of sounding, Further Complications is an album to enjoy. 'Tonight', 'I Love Life', 'Roadkill', 'Auschwitz To Ipswich' - all well-written songs but to these ears, not really either exciting or epic. (I would put This Is Hardcore in the 'endure, be educated by, admire and eventually love' camp). So probably for the first time since Different Class, Jarvis put together a collection of songs with, if not a triumphant air, certainly that of a band having fun by putting their love of various pop/rock eras together and coming up with something of their own. Which makes poor Tim McCall's untimely death all the more poignant. He is a star performer on many of the songs from this album.

It's not surprising then that a lot of the tracks are riff-driven, with the same motif driving the likes of the title track, Angela, Leftovers, Fuckingsong etc.
It's only 'I Never Said I Was Deep', 'Hold Still' and 'Discosong' which have a bit more subtlety about them but the sharp, quick thrills that the likes of Homewrecker, Pilchard, Angela etc. provide, makes it a more than worthwhile exercise. At 45 years of age fair play to him for turning the dial up to 11 and indulging in the Spinal Tap fantasies (which we probably all do a bit...no?).

Just one last note on I Never Said... - the bit where it goes from the end of the first chorus to the bridge part is really rather impressive. Unexpected, and very effective. And it allows for the thrice-repeated opening line of the last chorus, emphasising the ''Never said I was''. When you see that airbrushed, melody-lacking, ''produced'' to within an inch of its life, Pulp-songtitle robbing ''The Fear'' by Lily Allen winning an Ivor Novello for best song...

And finally on ''Girls Like It Too''. Like some of the songs above which had impressed me quite a lot when played live before their denouement as album tracks with some of the life sucked out of them, I was initially a little underwhelmed when Girls... finally came out last November. I felt it was missing a Doyle/Webber synth line over the top, especially during the bridge. But no. The official version is brilliant. The song is brilliant. The best pop song Jarvis wrote during the last decade. And the fact that it was all based on a couple of deftly-executed guitar lines (bless you Tim), chords with a strong melody, and some measured piano-accompaniement has made me appreciate it even more. I would love Jarvis to go further down that road - a Transformer, Lou Reed type album (there are probably better examples of what I'm thinking of). That blend of melodic songs with a bite to them, generally built around a 'traditional' guitars and piano sound. The one thing I do miss on Further Comps is the lack of piano after the pretty successful, (I thought), tentative steps of Jarvis writing and performing on it on 'I Will Kill Again', 'Big Julie' and 'Disney Time' on the debut.

Anyroad, sorry for the ramble. I probably said this using other words a year ago. But after listening to the album recently, along with the b-sides (I've only recently started to appreciate 'I Found Myself Looking For God' properly) it reminded me that, yeah, rather than a ''serious artist'' statement that maybe his first solo album (understandably) was, Further Complications is a fun listen with some pretty impressive bits thrown in too.
It's just a fucking album (so I'll stop writing now).