I've played 'Jarvis' a few times now off myspace and I think it's a great solo album.

Off other reviews I was getting a bit worried that it was all getting really self indulgent.....say all later, Bob Dylan warbling away on an acoustic.

Not so!

It's a top solo album.

-- Edited by Mick at 22:11, 2006-11-11

Eamonn wrote:

---

Have you bought the album? It's out today this side of the Irish Sea.

---

I got mine on Saturday morning. I ordered from CD-WOW. First thing I did when I woke up was check the mail. And there it was. It made my day! (I was expecting it on Monday)

First post, long time lurker...

Hopefully, my local record shop will have the album tomorrow... Anyway, I thought that I would mention some reviews of "Jarvis" from the Danish press.

FHM Magazine = five of six stars

Urban = five of six

Berlingske Tidende = four of six

Kind regards,
Morten

Here's the full text of the surprisingly well-written, and I think, very accurate Uncut review. They nailed it (except that I like "I Will Kill Again"):

Jarvis Cocker’s solo debut is not so much a curate’s egg as a game of two halves. The first "side" triggers a sinking sensation reminiscent of hearing Morrissey’s "Kill Uncle" for the first time in 1991: has our hero truly lost his touch?

From the cursory intro-instrumental "Loss Adjuster", through the '70s plod-rock of "Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time" to the clumsy corn of "Heavy Weather" (Jarvis in "timeless power of cliché" mode) and "I Will Kill Again" (Jarvis in "MOR with a heart of darkness" mode), it’s all dismayingly unconvincing and lacklustre in execution – even though the band features Pulp’s Steve Mackey on bass and Richard Hawley on guitar.

Aiming for third Big Star-style wrecked majesty but ending up closer to half-finished Nilsson, "Black Magic" does at least feature some clever production touches. Whereas the plinky, glockenspiely arrangement of "Baby’s Coming Back To Me" is worthy of, ooh, Side Two of "'Til The Band Comes In".

Then something changes. "Fat Children" is the pivot. Unpromising at first, with its club-footed indie stomp-rock and opaque lyric about psycho youth (redolent again of shite-period Moz), the song blossoms with the dreamy coda’s wordless wails and incandescent guitars. A hilariously mordant whinge at humanity’s worthlessness, "From A To I" predicts the fall of Western civilization and points the finger at every last one of us: "Evil comes from I know not where/But if you take a look/Inside yourself/ Maybe you’ll find some in there."

Its shimmery epic-ness not a million miles from the Verve’s "The Drugs Don’t Work", "Tonite" also argues that change starts with the individual: "You cannot set the world to rights/But you could stop being wrong/Oooh, tonight" - this wracked "oooh", mingling contempt and compassion, anguish and hope, being something of a Cocker trademark. "Disney Time" recalls Milan Kundera’s contention that kitsch is "the refusal to admit shit exists". It’s the shittiness of the world, Cocker notes, that makes us take shelter in feelgood movies and infantile happy endings.

"Julie" is prefaced by the opening sentences of Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, a novel about a 12-year-old girl undergoing an existential-sexual crisis triggered by the wedding of her elder brother (who just happens to be named Jarvis, an unlikely moniker for the 1940s South). In Cocker’s "remix", a troubled teenager with a developing body fends off sweaty lads and lecherous adults, protected by the feeling of invincibility granted her by pop music.

The best comes last, with "Quantum Theory", which sounds exactly how everyone, deep down, wishes "The Drift" did: "Scott IV - the Sequel". A lambent ambient-orchestral arrangement, teeming with tingling sublimimals, frames Cocker’s dream of a parallel-dimension paradise where "Everyone is happy… fish do not have bones… gravity can not reach us anymore… you are not alone."

When he croaks the closing refrain, "Everything is gonna be alright", Jarvis sounds broken but a believer despite himself; the cynicism and misanthropy, tinged with shame and self-loathing, that’s belched forth elsewhere on the record evaporated clean away. There’s such a distance, such a journey, between the first song and this luminous closer, it’s almost like two different albums, two different artists even.

 

-- Edited by Fuss Free at 14:31, 2006-11-13

I disagree; this review inspired me to climb off the "Jarvis is god" soapbox and listen to certain things a little more carefully next time. I felt this reviewer did his/her homework.

Well, now that I'm hearing the album for the second time, I do agree that that review was off. And I'm going to climb back on my soapbox and say that anyone who can't see the genius in this album is stuck in the mid-nineties and has never understood Jarvis in the least. Start at 1981 and get to know this man through his entire body of work. Reading your posts, I feel like I'm the only fan who understands this man. Maybe that's too much work for the casual listener or the average fan, but it's probably not meant to go platinum or to make every Pulp fan happy. This is the brilliant expression of a genius at this time in his life, and I think that deep down inside he knows he's got lots more to give. Thank God a few of us can hear this for what it is. I believe history will prove me right.

I wasn't making that reference directly. I don't worship the man, but he is my hero. I wouldn't have been able to write the songs I've written without his influence.

I know I was a bit intense above, but I do feel that everyone's saying, "This isn't Pulp," without understanding that Jarvis has been Pulp all along. I think people are comparing this album to the most popular Pulp albums, and I feel it's inappropriate. We've all got to move on.

It's just my opinion, but it's true.

You're right. I got a little excited in the middle of the album. Don't mind me.

Pitchfork has a go:

Jarvis
Jarvis
[Rough Trade; 2006]
Rating: 6.2
Buy it from Amp Camp
Download it from Emusic
"I was 17 when I heard the countdown start..." sang Jarvis Cocker in 1991, a decade of dogged obscurity into his Pulp adventure, but finally getting his urgent ambition back on track. Which means that this new solo debut makes it over a quarter-century since the clock started ticking on his peculiar pop career. The uncharitable might suggest that countdown ended long ago-- when his band conquered Glastonbury in 95, when he stormed Michael Jackson's stage at the Brits in 96, when Pulp's greatest hits limped onto an ignominious #71 on the UK charts in 2001-- and by now we are deep into injury time. Of course, those same people might have suggested he call it a day in 91.

The comeback begins, inauspiciously, with a sketchy instrumental called "Loss Adjuster"-- the kind of thing that usually suggests a desperate pop musician touting around for a little soundtrack work. But in its title at least, it gives a hint of the record's concerns. Because it's not only his surname he's mislaid somewhere in the past five years: Jarvis is the record of someone losing hope, the sound of dejection turned up to 10. Cocker was always Britpop's poet laureate of anticipation, creaming himself at the thought of the next seedy shag, the glittering prospect of fame, the moonage daydream of buzzing around on jetpacks, or even the thought of a provincial shopping center fountain in the unimaginable year 2000. It was always likely to end in disappointment-- but how else were you to survive the monotonous mundanity without supercharging it with the promise of sex, death, and celebrity? Even the crashing hangover of This Is Hardcore took a sneaky, surreptitious thrill in just how sublimely low it could go.

What awaits the disappointed romantic, when he concludes that life isn't elsewhere, is the evil of banality... and maybe the banality of evil. "From A to I"-- the title can't quite bring itself to spell things out-- is one of a series of gentle little ballads that matter-of-factly suggest "it's the end, why don't you admit it? It's the same from Auschwitz to Ipswich." "I Will Kill Again" is another morsel of comfort-food turned sour, detailing a middle-class evening-- a nice family home, a bottle of wine, some classical music-- and the overwhelming sensation that at the end of the day, you're a murderer at heart. It's an odd effect-- like Radiohead played for queasy laughs, or as though Chris Martin was suddenly possessed by the spirits of Spengler and Adorno-- but you can't say it's entirely successful. Because Cocker's great gift as a writer was his ability to dramatize situations, craft little plays within fizzing three-minute pop songs. "Cunts Are Still Running the World"-- the album trailer, and a secret track 30 minutes after the record's ended-- makes a point with admirable bluntness, and has the thrill of plain speaking in an anodyne pop culture, but it's a placard for the pissed-off rather than a pop song.

"Black Magic" nails the disillusion. Like the self-referential "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time," it's a stodgy enough lump of glumly glam riffola, but it's one of the rare occasions Cocker sounds involved in a song. "You only get to see the light one time in your life," he complains. "Is there anything more wretched than having just one sight?". It's bitter but brave, a kind of negative tribute to the magic of pop from someone who's been cast out of its spell. Elsewhere he sounds most alive singing from beyond the grave: "Fat children took my life," he seethes on the eponymous rant. "The parents are to blame"-- knowing he's sounding like a nannyish MP or Daily Mail reader, but running with it anyway-- "breeding maggots without the sense to turn into flies." At least he can still get intoxicated with disgust.

Cocker is too much of an entertainer not to offer some way out-- even Hardcore tacked on some unconvincing uplift. But the final two tracks here really are the strongest, saving the record and suggesting some way out of the funk. "Quantum Theory" is an eerie prayer to possibility of parallel dimensions where "everyone is happy, fish do not have bones...and you are not alone." There is a better world-- well, because there must be.

And though it doesn't look strong on paper, it's "Big Julie" that makes the record worthwhile. It's essentially a Belle and Sebastian song-- albeit a better one than Stuart Murdoch has mustered for a few of years: the story of lonely teenage girl, perved over by the local boys, their dads, and even the Sunday School teacher, who finds the promise, at least, of liberation, peace, and harmony, in a pop song on the radio. "It's like all the greatest people in the world, jumping up and feeling fine," he sings. "It's the sound of her trying to find something to like." It's one of the biggest, most sentimental lines in pop's book-- "her life was saved by rock and roll"-- but the bleakness of the songs that precede it, and the desparation Cocker brings to it, make the cliché seem earned. It's Jarvis's challenge now, if he really wants to make a go of going solo, to try and write a few more songs that might be worthy of Big Julie.

-Stephen Troussé, November 16, 2006


But... but... every Belle & Sebastian song is actually a rip off of Pulp's "Everybody's Problem". So I guess it all comes 'round full circle.

-- Edited by Fuss Free at 13:50, 2006-11-16

I see where the Belle and Sebastian comparison comes from, but Jarvis has been writing these kinds of songs for even longer. Julie is definitely "related" to Susan, Deborah and Minnie Timperly.

josta59 wrote:

---

And I'm going to climb back on my soapbox and say that anyone who can't see the genius in this album is stuck in the mid-nineties and has never understood Jarvis in the least. Start at 1981 and get to know this man through his entire body of work. Reading your posts, I feel like I'm the only fan who understands this man. Maybe that's too much work for the casual listener or the average fan, but it's probably not meant to go platinum or to make every Pulp fan happy. This is the brilliant expression of a genius at this time in his life, and I think that deep down inside he knows he's got lots more to give. Thank God a few of us can hear this for what it is. I believe history will prove me right.

---

I don't see the genius.  I would say I'm neither stuck in the mid-nineties nor totally lacking understanding of Jarvis, however, I would doubt any fan understands him.

I started around 1992, but have gone back to the start.  It is the expression of Jarvis at this time of his life, but I don't see it as brilliant nor the work of a genius.  Some like you will, and that's fair enough, but why put those who disagree down?

It's a record, and the listener decides how good or bad it is.   I  don't believe it is that good.  It feels a bit cobbled together.  A couple of tracks for Nancy Sinatra here, a couple of tracks for Harry Potter there, and a one off download track stuck on the end. 

Why would only casual listeners and average fans not like it?  I've listened to it three times (and seen the Koko show). I would say I'm a little more involved than the average fan, but I still don't think it's much more than functional Jarvis.  Few surprises and few thrills.

Personally, I believe it will only have a shelf life of a week or two when I've replaced it on my MP3 player.  My CD will be stored away with the rest of the Pulp/Relaxed Muscle back catalogue.  It would be nice to think I could come back to this album in time, and really enjoy it, as I do with pretty much everything from Separations to  A Heavy Nite with...  but I doubt it.

It doesn't really matter whom history proves right or wrong.  I hope you are.