I know it's a sign of the times but it pisses me off when albums you genuinely care about, and anticipate months in advance, are leaked and put up on an 'invite-only' music download site for people to download and give a solitary listen, dismiss as pretentious crap, and then wait for the next as yet unreleased lp to be uploaded. As if it's a contest to see who can consume the most without paying a penny...

I think the Different Class deluxe edition was downloaded 600 odd times on 'Oink'. If even a fraction of that amount bought it (and I suppose a small percentage might have decided to buy it on hearing the 'digitalised' version to be fair) maybe Island would think a bit more about giving us a We Love Life bonus demo cd in a few years...

Eamonn wrote:

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I know it's a sign of the times but it pisses me off when albums you genuinely care about, and anticipate months in advance, are leaked and put up on an 'invite-only' music download site for people to download and give a solitary listen, dismiss as pretentious crap, and then wait for the next as yet unreleased lp to be uploaded. As if it's a contest to see who can consume the most without paying a penny...

I think the Different Class deluxe edition was downloaded 600 odd times on 'Oink'. If even a fraction of that amount bought it (and I suppose a small percentage might have decided to buy it on hearing the 'digitalised' version to be fair) maybe Island would think a bit more about giving us a We Love Life bonus demo cd in a few years...

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I'm a member over at oink and yes I download a lot of crap I only listen to once. But every so often I download something amazing, something that I wouldn't have heard if it wasn't for oink. And I then buy it. If it wasn't for oink I'd have bought some shite cds I wish I hadn't and I imagine my cd collection would be far less diverse

edit: back on topic, i'm hoping the album will grow on me - first couple of listens have been a bit iffy

I've only heard the three tracks that are going around....Tonite, Black Magic and I Will Kill Again.

While I understand, or expect that none of these are "essential" tracks on the record I like them very much.

"Black Magic" would have snuggled in nicely on This is Hardcore...

 Really like the production on this record, kind of similiar to We Love Life in its bold use of drums and the sort of 60s thing.

I'm going to like this a lot.

At the mo, i like the album every 2 listens.

the first two songs are really too slow, its like speed em up a little man. Stormy weather is either good or completly shite to me ears. Big julie's grown a bit on me. i stil dont get Quantum theory and Tonite is still unecessary.

About Black Magic / Crimson and Clover : the music is indeed the same, but the melody is not. we'll see if the credits are shared on this one but i fear a lawsuit

i was reviewing my itunes list yesterday and though, fuck, how good (better) would it have been with Magic Work, Hippogriff and This is the Night on this record. i know they're harry potter song but they would have given a boost to "Jarvis".

i'm just past my first listen of the album. very cheeky! so far i love 'don't let him waste your time', and i'm still waiting for 'quantum theory' to speed up a bit (then it could be quite excellent - everything is going to be alright...). i quite like 'running the world' though - it's almost worth the half-hour wait!

considering i've had relaxed muscle in the stereo lately there's no excessive swearing or general inappropriateness on this one... sadly it just seems a bit of a let-down coming in the wake of the reissues.

and does the intro to 'big julie' not completely reek of holy bible-era manic street preachers?

and 'pleasingly pulpy' is the most awesome thing ever! thank you.

....totally. maybe it lowers the sells to say 5%, but not more, espcially on "products" like that. its not atomic kitten or whatever.

out of 1000 people that d/l because it was free , maybe 25 % wre gonna be buying it no matter what, and the rest would have just listened to the singles or burned a copy from their hometown library. i mean, its not because 1000 people dl an album that those 1000 people were gonna buy the album. that's what record companies would like us to think, but its completly untrue.

what's gonna be trickier, its with kids that will be growing up with digital d/ls and that never stepped a foot in a record store.

anyway, i'll be buying it, coz music without a physical release...there's something missing.

Eamonn wrote:

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Maybe what saddens me a bit is the disappearance of the first day/week of sale when everyone rushes to the record store to buy a long-awaited album and there's an excited buzz among those fans. Now it's more a case of most people listening to it on their pc's up to (or over in this case) a month in advance of the cd being on sale so the 'official release' can't help but be a climax.

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agreed. back then, in the 90s, when we were young (what an old cunt must i sound like saying that), there was nothing better than running away from school at lunchtime to buy, say This is hardcore, and wonder on the way to the shop if its was gonna be a huge record or a huge letdown. i guess now music is a product like anything else, like food, or whatever. and that reflects on new acts, which are more products than artists. not saying pulp oasis or the beatles werent products, but at least, they created a common memory. i dont think franz ferdinand or the killers will create any kind of good memory among teens nowadays. i could be wrong, i hope i am, but when i go the music shops now, its kinda depressing. i dont feel excitment, i just feel like im in a supermarket.

for me, i have to own the cd, i like the complete package and i like contributing to the sucess of the bands success. They have to be worth it though, i rarely buy albums. I remember waiting for andy's records or our price to open before school to buy pulp's singles and albums and listening to them at dinner time.

bob_ferris wrote:

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i've listened to the album twice now and i have to say its gearing up to be a classic! gets better each time you hear it. i absolutely love the song "i will kill again", sends a shiver down your spine. i also love fat children and big julie. this will probably change after my 3rd 4th listens...

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I have listened to it twice and am finding it pretty bland musically.   Lyrically it is good, but there isn't a memorable tune (bar cunts) in the whole thing.   I popped it on my MP3 player along with the Peel Sessions, and as the latter followed was struck by how impressive Turkey Mambo Mama was after Jarvis.

Maybe I need to listen again, but it's shaping up to be my least favourite Jarvis album (Pulp/Relaxed Muscle) since Freaks.....

I'll definitely be buying the album on its release date, but I have already 'acquired' it. And if anything, I'm more excited about buying it. I'll have to have a few more listens before I can write a review worth reading, but I'm very impressed with what I hear. I just wish Jarvis would do a proper UK tour!

Fuss Free wrote:

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Quote:
What exactly were you expecting the album to sound like? I'm just curious because it's exactly what I thought it would be: half-serious social commentary set to MOR tunes. The songs aren't particularly catchy, and you won't hear any of them in a club, but the lyrics are good, and Jarv's personality drives the album.

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Fuss Free wrote:

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Quote Andreas:
The fact that two of the songs are old ones written for Nancy Sinatra just makes me think that Jarvis is lazy and that he hasn't put all the effort he could have done into the album.

You're right. Jarvis is lazy. I understand he recorded the entire album live, presumably just so he could just get it over with as fast as possible. At some point you realize that Jarv's laziness is part of his appeal. He'll never be accused of trying too hard.

-- Edited by Fuss Free at 03:49, 2006-11-04

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I thought I read somewhere that different bits of the songs were recorded in different studios. Backing tracks in Sheffield; vocals in Paris. Something like that, anyway. It doesn't sound like a live-in-studio recording to me, really. I doubt he was singing with a live string section on "Big Julie," for instance.

josta59 wrote:

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I must be the only big Jarvis fan who's only heard the bonus track. Wikipedia says this album won't even be released in the UK until Nov. 13. How many of you have heard this legally? I'm fine with waiting; it makes it more fun. And if there's any musician in the world I want to support 100%, it's this one.

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I guess no one has heard it legally unless they have an advanced copy.

I will buy it anyway, but that doesn't stop me having a good listen first.

As for supporting 100%, I guess having the entire Pulp/Relaxed Muscle back catalogue, and attending god knows how many gigs with Koko to come, makes me a mere 99% now I've heard it early  

Fuss Free wrote:

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And I'll buy a used copy someday.

Which raises the question, do artists ever profit from the resale of used CDs?

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Never really thought of it like that.  I only buy used/second hand if I can't get it ordinarily.  In fact, so called limited editions hack me off as you are forced to buy them (of course I do, and often second hand as I'm not always privvy to the initial sale).

Don't like buying 2nd hand as you never know what condition it is in.  And I have got a couple of things via eBay/Record Tape Exchange which were so bad I had to but them twice so hardly a bargain.

Nowadays, I think that if an album is deleted, it's fair game for, ahem, illegal copies.

All that said I will buy Jarvis as soon as I can (those re-issues can wait, I have the originals and they'll do for now)

Eamon- thanks for the updates. My thoughts are that NME and Uncut just have higher standards and better taste. 7 out of 10 sounds about right to me.

Ok. Rant time.

Littlesaint- When it comes to buying used records, I'd say it's 40% cashflow, 60% moral. As I see it, the record industry is scamming consumers. These days it costs a label around 8 cents to press each CD, yet they sell them for more than 100x that price. Whilst I understand there is an overhead cost to producing a record, I know people who've produced absolutely brilliant records with only the spare cash they scrounged together from waiting tables. Seems to me any band who spends a half million dollars to produce their album had better show us a work of absolute staggering genius in order to justify the expense. More often than not, that money ends up dusting somebody's nose or stuffing somebody's veins.

Why should so many bands slave away, doing odd jobs and recording in their scant spare time whilst these "superstars" prance around flippantly wasting everyone's time and money? It almost goes without saying that the Library Assistant who records music because it's her passion will turn out something better and more interesting than a "career band" anyway. If I ran a record label, I'd cut prices on CDs in half. I'd cut the fat, and tell bands they'd better deliver some songs or go deliver some pizzas. You know: work... like everyone else.

If I had more money I probably wouldn't care as much, but any good band should know a thing or two about poverty, and they should respect my situation as much as I respect theirs.

Rant over.

Jarvis
Rough Trade

Jarvis Cocker must remember the golden age of pop stars, the pre-punk era of Bowie and Ferry and men from Mars (or Hull) who were beamed down to Earth via Top of the Pops every Thursday. But even shiny young heroes age and have to find another role. Not everyone can model old man’s duds for M&S.

No wonder Cocker seemed so lost when Pulp gradually ground to a halt. He was already in his thirties when he rode Britpop to fame, and his true contemporaries are writing Bafta-winning comedies or presenting chat shows. Music remains a young man’s game. So it really is a pleasure to find that his first solo record can bear comparison with anything he’s produced. 

After some recent dabbling in the comedy electro-punk of Relaxed Muscle and songwriting for such icons as Nancy Sinatra and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Cocker has rediscovered his own strengths. With the guitarist Richard Hawley and bassist Steve Mackey, from his former band, he seems revived, while his sardonic wit is as sharp as ever.

The brilliant Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time, Sheffield Spector at its finest, has been retrieved from Nancy Sinatra and rearranged to Cocker’s satisfaction. The tinkling Baby’s Coming Back to Me is now heartbreaking and sarcastic simultaneously. The tense Black Magic very deliberately echoes Crimson and Clover, the Tommy James and the Shondells US chart topper from 1968.

Such a blatant steal is unusual. The beauty here is generally in the details. So the comically evil ballad I Will Kill Again features a piano part reminiscent of Bowie’s Changes.

Morrissey might have enlisted Tony Visconti to add a touch of Starman to his last record, but this is smarter. Hawley is Cocker’s Johnny Marr too. His Velvet Underground-inspired twang sprawls all over the much quoted From A to I as Cocker glumly declares: “They want our way of life, well they can take mine any time they like.” 

Maybe it’s a consequence of middle age — he’s now 43 and a father — but Cocker just can’t hide his dismay. He mocks Daily Mail attitudes, yet on the thumping Fat Children (took my life) he sings of how “the parents are the problem/ giving birth to maggots without the sense to become flies”. But adulthood doesn’t have to be negative. On Tonite, the one song that sounds more Hawley than Cocker, he warns his own camp followers that “the night belongs to lovers, so show some respect”. 

Cocker retains his empathy with the misfits. The lovely Big Julie (presumably a nod to his reclusive friend Scott Walker’s Big Louise), another song for, and about, one of the outsiders, wriggles with frustrated potential.

His frustration is very adult though, that of a man who can’t believe he’s again seeing the idiocy that he grew up kicking against.

The hidden track Running the World (nasty folk, according to the obscenely catchy chorus) was apparently inspired by the very fact that Live 8 needed to be staged. Plus ça change, as Cocker, now resident in Paris, must surely believe.  

STEVE JELBERT

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.

Eamonn wrote:

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

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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.

josta59 wrote:

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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.

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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.