Allmusic.com had this review of all the new Pulp & Jarvis material on their homepage for the past week. They pulled it yesterday so I thought I'd post it here for posterity. It's a long one.

Disco 2006: Jarvis Cocker's Comeback
By Stephen Thomas Erlewine

The key to a successful pop comeback is to be gone long enough to be missed but not long enough to be forgotten. Jarvis Cocker, master student of pop that he is, has pulled this trick off with ease in 2006. He disappeared off the cultural radar shortly before his band, Pulp, released their Hits compilation in 2003, and late last summer he primed the pump for his return with a series of Pulp reissues before releasing his solo debut this past month in the U.K. None of these discs has been released in the U.S., which is fitting: Pulp never made it big in America, despite cultivating legions of die-hard fans scattered across the country -- fans who were eager enough to shell out $11 apiece for two-part singles, so they may not flinch from buying double-disc reissues of the band's 1994 major-label breakthrough His 'n' Hers, their 1995 masterpiece Different Class, and the compelling, flawed 1998 album This Is Hardcore, along with a double-disc set of Peel Sessions and the Cocker solo album, particularly since it's so easy to get import discs thanks to the Internet. Although there's no denying this is a lot of music to sort through, it's worth the effort: taken as a body of work, these nine CDs offer ample proof that Pulp greatly enriched pop in the '90s and that we've sorely missed Cocker's perspective so far this decade.

It's not that Cocker has been inactive since the turn of the millennium, but he has been quiet ever since Pulp's last album -- the lovely, elegiac Scott Walker-produced We Love Life -- failed to create much excitement outside of the usual clusters of critics and longtime fans upon its release in 2001. By the time Hits appeared, the band had been put on hiatus, and Cocker effectively went into exile, at first teaming up with Pulp touring guitarist Richard Hawley for the electro-pop goof Relaxed Muscle and then decamping to Paris, where he got married and had a baby. He started to slowly resurface in 2005, leading the Weird Sisters -- the Pulp/Radiohead supergroup assembled for the film adaptation of Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire -- and then cultivating a volume of the mixtape series The Trip with former Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, a longtime colleague. As interesting as these ventures were -- the Relaxed Muscle album was loose and invigorating in a way Cocker hadn't been in years, the Weird Sisters songs were appropriate wizard-pop -- they were deliberately smaller scale than what Pulp achieved in the '90s, which made sense: few bands have scorned fame quite so publicly as they did with This Is Hardcore, which is as bleak as Nirvana's In Utero or the Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible in its outlook even if its music is thankfully leavened by Pulp's persistent love for glam and symphonic pop. But revisiting their '90s albums via these excellent reissues reveals how this revulsion to fame is perfectly suited for a band that never was part of the mainstream: there may have been a time when the planets aligned just right and this group of misshapes, mistakes, and misfits was nearly as big as Oasis and Blur, but they were always at their heart arty geeks, outsiders obsessed with pop and art in equal measure, which is what gave their music immediacy and lasting impact.

Nowhere are their outsider roots more apparent than on The Peel Sessions, a double-disc set that contains their very first session from 1981 and runs all the way to their last one, 20 years later. On this tentative yet exuberant set of art-punk from 1981, the early Pulp shows plenty of promise: its gangly rhythms, jittery guitars, swaths of synths, and echoed vocals all recalling Factory Records' tightly wound sound without belonging to it, largely due to Jarvis himself, whose schoolboy poetry has a beguiling innocence and whose love of pop already is peeking out from behind his artiness. At times, that artiness can be overwhelming -- as it is on "Refuse to Be Blind," which only points the way toward the murk of Pulp's mid-'80s work -- but the ridiculously titled "Turkey Mambo Momma," the cheerfully dorky "Please Don't Worry," and the understated "Wishful Thinking" show a good art-pop band at its beginning, fumbling forward but performing with a kinetic enthusiasm that makes this session better than Pulp's debut proper, It. They may sound awkward on this 1981 debut, but they're filled with an ambition and smarts -- two things they don't yet know how to use, but which make them endearing even if they're not necessarily good. It was an audacious beginning to a career, but as the legend says, it took Jarvis a long time to get anywhere. The rest of the decade consisted of struggle, as Pulp shifted through different lineups as they were mired in gothic muck until rave and acid house pushed Jarvis toward a new sound powered by a new lineup.

All this is mercifully undocumented on The Peel Sessions -- it can't be documented since there were no invitations back to Peel's program -- so when the collection jumps forward 12 years to the summer of 1993, just as Pulp was leaving the indie Gift behind for the major Island, the effect is startling. Cocker had devised his outsider persona, raising his obsessions with sex and otherness to near-mythic levels, and the band had developed a sound to match: wry and elegant yet sharp and savage, pieced together from parts of pop past but spun for the present. The 1993 session consisted of two of the moodier numbers that would later appear on 1994's His 'n' Hers -- "Pink Glove" and "Acrylic Afternoons" -- and while that album did have dark undercurrents flowing throughout, it also was crackling with passion and excitement: it was the sound of a band that had paid so many dues, they not only knew when their time had arrived, but once it finally did arrive, they knew how to exploit it. As such, His 'n' Hers sounds in retrospect like Pulp's first genuine debut album: the record that introduced Pulp and Cocker to the world in all their glory, and there's such excitement and confidence to the band's performances here that the album still sounds immediate and invigorating 12 years after its release. The new double-disc reissue only adds depth to this de facto debut. It gathers all the various B-sides from the album's singles -- highlighted by the three supporting songs from the The Sisters EP, otherwise known as the "Babies" single: the wonderful, ominous "Your Sister's Clothes," itself a nasty kissing cousin of "Babies," the chilly pulsating "Seconds," and "His 'n' Hers," a coolly reserved epic built on a burbling synth, a James Bond guitar lick, and a samba rhythm -- a few non-Peel BBC performances and four demos for unreleased songs, the best of which is "The Boss," where if you listen hard enough you can hear the Springsteen connection Cocker mentions in his terrific liner notes (all four of the Pulp reissues are annotated by Jarvis himself).

His 'n' Hers, of course, was merely the prelude to Different Class, a blockbuster everywhere but the U.S. during the heady days of Britpop in 1995 and 1996, due in large part to the incendiary "Common People," that rare pop single that crystallizes the spirit of the moment yet transcends it because it is so sharp and thrilling in both its words and music. If Different Class could be reduced to merely one single, it would be not much better than a Sleeper or Echobelly record, or if it could be summed up as a handful of hits -- and this did generate several other big ones in the equally anthemic rallying cry "Mis-Shapes," the wry rave tale "Sorted for E's & Wizz," the glitzy stomp of "Disco 2000," and the quite sweet love song "Something Changed," which would have easily fit onto the air during the height of swinging London in the '60s -- it could be seen as perhaps little more than the '90s version of Brothers in Arms, a record that was a phenomenon for a couple of years but is forever tied to its time. But Different Class is rare, a record -- like the other towering albums of Britpop, Suede, Parklife, and Definitely Maybe -- that retains its power years after its release because it presents a precise, fully realized world view. Musically, it may have echoes of the past -- surely, it's possible to hear the Kinks, Bowie, Roxy Music, and the Smiths within Pulp -- but these aren't recycled references, presented either for comfort or in an attempt to be seen part of a grand British pop tradition: they're the scraps of pop culture that Pulp has clung onto as outsiders, the sound that they've always imagined that the world should sound like. And on Different Class, they're storming the gates of the establishment, sometimes confronting directly (as on "Mis-Shapes" and "Common People") and sometimes subversively, as on the brilliant "I Spy," where his antics are as insidious and devious as an undetected virus. This bracing jolt of personal politics fuels Different Class and gives weight to the rest of the record, filled with stories of love won and lost or nights whiled away at bars, clubs, and raves -- and since they're all presented as pop songs that hit the gut first and then the head, the album's impact has not diminished in the slightest in the past decade.

The deluxe edition doesn't do much to change the perception of Different Class: the 11 tracks gathered on the second disc prove that Pulp was operating at the peak of their powers, leaving songs that would have been highlights on His 'n' Hers, such as the quite addictive retro-disco thump of "We Can Dance Again," behind as mere demos. While not all the B-sides from the singles show up here -- a bunch of remixes have been left behind -- the important ones do, including the cutting, wickedly funny teacher-student sex tale "PTA," their nimble Trainspotting contribution, "Mile End," and the heartbreaking "Ansaphone." Then, along with the curiosity that is Nick Cave's inspired "Pub Rock" cover of "Disco 2000," there are the four demos for unreleased songs, which in addition to the aforementioned "We Can Dance Again" also include the tremendous "Catcliffe Shakedown," a six-minute epic that may be driven by a slightly dorky beat (which Jarvis Cocker calls "frankly ridiculous" in his great liner notes, which also feature full lyrics for all songs on these two discs), but it gains strength from its gangly rhythms, and it's distinguished by a great Jarvis lyric that, by his own admission, resembles "I Spy," but where that contained a barely veiled menace, this is pure riotous satire of a nasty down-class small town ("why not try our delicious lager-styled drink?").

Cocker didn't bother to mask his menace and mean-spiritedness on This Is Hardcore, the 1998 album that opens with the lyric "This is the sound of someone losing the plot/Making out that they're OK when they're not/You're gonna like it, but not a lot," a line that Jarvis admits in his liner notes to the deluxe edition is an accurate summation of the album. And it is true that This Is Hardcore is not for everyone, particularly since Pulp willfully shuns every element that brought them success on Different Class; even the one song that could conceivably be played at clubs or pop radio, the driving Bowie-esque "Party Hard," is remarkably dour in its dogged pursuit of a good time. So, This Is Hardcore isn't fun, the way that even His 'n' Hers is with its unsettling undercurrents of unrequited lust, but as a descent into the black heart of darkness, it's gripping -- even more so in the new deluxe edition. The flaws that plagued the original album -- namely, how the album kind of peters out at the end, as Cocker and company futilely try to spin a happy ending -- are obscured here by the second disc, which sustains and deepens the dark moods of the record, turning this into a proper sprawling double album, one that is certainly uneven but where its flaws are nearly as compelling as its successes. Some of this new material -- and there are six unheard songs and demos here -- is a little rough, but their unfinished quality seems to be an appropriate fit for the conflicted emotions Jarvis Cocker unveils on these songs. With the exception of "You Are the One," a surging pop tune that falls halfway between the sound of His 'n' Hers and the sensibility of Different Class, all of these demos are quite nasty and dark -- and with another exception, the character sketch of a hipster on "Street Operator," they're all naked explorations of the emotional crisis Cocker laid bare on This Is Hardcore. Almost literally quite naked: there's a pair of genitally obsessed tunes in "Can I Have My Balls Back, Please?" and "My Erection," the former a drifting melancholy pop tune, the latter a dark disco number sung through a vocoder that only makes it creepier. Then, Jarvis paints a rather horrifyingly cynical portrait of domestic bliss on "Modern Marriage" (in his liner notes, he reveals that he backed out of the engagement after recording this, and after hearing this, it's little wonder) and the fully finished outtake "It's a Dirty World," a portrait of a stripper that sounds every bit as ugly, sordid, and self-loathing as "The Fear" or "This Is Hardcore."

There are some lighter moments here, too, and they're better than the lighter moments on the proper album: they come in the form of the stomping Slade-meets-Sweet glam fantasia "We Are the Boyz," recorded for the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack, and the richly cinematic "Tomorrow Never Dies," which was stupidly rejected as a James Bond theme (which was why it was originally released as "Tomorrow Never Lies" as a "Help the Aged" B-side). These, like the other previously released non-LP material here -- the impassioned melancholy of "Like a Friend," the slow sleazy crawl of "The Professional," the sterile alienating pulse of "Ladies' Man" (like "My Erection," sung through a vocoder), the quietly contemplative "Laughing Boy" -- all grow in stature by being accompanied by the outtakes, but nothing is as much of a revelation as "Cocaine Socialism." Originally intended for the LP, Jarvis got cold feet and rewrote it as "Glory Days," one of the forced bits of positivity on the record, then released the lyric with new music as a B-side for "A Little Soul." Here, the words are reunited with their original music and the results are glorious: a "Common People" that purposely avoids pop hooks in favor of unrestrained fury, which gives Cocker's vicious satire of the self-satisfaction of Tony Blair's newly ascendant New Labor Party shocking force. Nearly a decade on, it still packs a wallop, reading as an epitaph for '90s liberal ideals -- not only for Blair believers but for Clintonites in America, too. In this incarnation, "Cocaine Socialism" is an unheard masterpiece, the best moment on this reissue but far from the only reason to get this incarnation of the album: out of all of the three deluxe editions, This Is Hardcore turns out to be the only one whose reputation is enhanced when the album is expanded.

Jarvis might not have had the stomach to release "Cocaine Socialism" in all its glory in 1998, but as he was launching his comeback in 2006, he had no compunction on releasing "Running the World," a cheerfully vulgar protest song that he streamed on his MySpace page prior to the release of his solo album -- simply, cleanly titled Jarvis, not so simply called The Jarvis Cocker Album in the liner notes and on its spine -- this fall. It might not be so boldly featured on his album -- it's buried at the end of the record as a bonus track in true '90s style -- but it does illustrate why Cocker's comeback this year is so welcome: other singer/songwriters may offer similar social commentary, but nobody else can capture the mood of the time like Jarvis, nor can they do it with such elegant wit and style. Not that Jarvis sounds much like Different Class or any other prime '90s Pulp. Its closest antecedent is the warm, meditative pop of We Love Life, even if this isn't nearly as cinematic as that Scott Walker-produced affair. Given the hushed atmosphere of much of the record, it'd be easy to call this introspection but the curious thing about Jarvis is that it never feels as personal as any of Pulp's '90s albums, where Cocker's writing was as twitchy and revealing as an exposed nerve: he may have trussed up his thoughts in metaphors and filtered his feelings through narratives, but it impossible to hear "Babies," "Common People," or "The Fear" without imagining Jarvis himself as the protagonist, the central figure in each song. Here, that's not so much the case. Cocker may well tackle topics close to his heart as a lifelong misshape now facing his forties with a new wife and baby, but there's little sense of confession on Jarvis: instead, the music is unmistakably the work of a craftsman. That word can seem a pejorative to some, since it implies that emotion has been sacrificed for mechanized musicianship, but that's hardly true in regard to this album. This is exquisite craft, the kind that a pop singer/songwriter who has been working at this for a quarter of a century should have: Cocker knows how to structure a song, knows how to write a lyric with momentum and wit, he knows how to construct a pop record as thrilling as "Black Magic," built around an inspired "Crimson and Clover" sample. That's one of only a couple of moments that are straight-up pop, the other notable ones being the wonderful opener, "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time," which glides back and forth on an irresistible elastic hook, and the mean, pummeling "Fat Children," quite possibly the hardest Cocker has ever rocked. These songs -- along with the cheerfully vulgar and inspired protest song "Running the World," buried at the end of the album -- stand out among the meditative numbers here, songs that recall the measured craft of We Love Life but lack both the epic scale and pervading sense of hope that characterize that album.

While hope may not be entirely absent here, Cocker stares dead-on into much of the dread that's permeated the new millennium. The specter of terrorism hangs over the remarkable "From Auschwitz to Ipswich" while "Running the World" directly attacks presidents and prime ministers, but as Cocker also strikes out against corporatization, against apathy, against fat children, he captures the creeping sense that Western society is slowly, surely turning morally bankrupt -- and he does it with a weariness that stops short of resignation: he's doing this because he has to, because that's what adult artists do. And this is adult pop, no question about it -- even "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" feels built on the idea that the clock is running short for the woman at its center -- but it is an adult pop that escapes conformity without succumbing to the high-class fashions and stylish obscurism of indie yuppies; it doesn't feel like hipster posturing, it's as much a reflection of Cocker's lyrical and musical obsessions as any of his Pulp albums, only it's made specifically for solitude, not the dance clubs. Nevertheless, like the rest of Cocker's work, Jarvis hits the gut first and then lingers in the mind -- and even if it isn't as immediate as the prime of Pulp, it's a richly nuanced, complicated album that fills the same need as Pulp's music did ten years ago. It satisfies the need for music that simultaneously nourishes the mind, soul, and body -- pop that's sophisticated but not stuffy, pop that's stylish but not disposable, pop that sounds great on the surface but is built on substance. That's the kind of music that's been Jarvis Cocker's specialty for 12 years now, and while it's comforting to know that his '90s music retains its power, it's even better to know that he's back making new music that builds upon his considerable legacy.