Spangly magic!  Pulp in a nutshell

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/gig-23357499-details/Jarvis+Cocker/gigReview.do?reviewId=23378719

Solo Jarvis has the common touch now
Martha De Lacey, London Lite 18.12.06  

In the playground of pop, parting ways with your posse can be a risky business. Take, for example, Take That: you do a Robbie and you come up trumps, coupling charm and chat with a naughty new take on mainstream pop. You do a Gary and you continue to churn out mouldy ballads with which your manager refused to tarnish Take That's good name.

As a child of the Nineties Britpop era, Pulp always held a special place in my heart as the flag-bearers of geeky indie-dance. More contentiously angular than either Oasis or Blur, Pulp's camply spangly offerings delighted millions, and more than one eyebrow was raised when the main man Jarvis Cocker released his eponymous 2006 solo album. And on Saturday in Camden's Roundhouse, Mr Cocker gently yet effervescently soared through his infant solo back catalogue.

Striding on stage to cacophonous applause, Jarvis launched into Fat Children with a vigour that would befit a man half his age. In his forty-fourth year, the skinny, bespectacled, grasshopper-limbed singer strutted about with the charisma and energy of an adventurous chimpanzee.

He engaged the crowd with a frenzy of lyrical assaults on painful break-ups and the political downfall of the modern world in a melodically mellow timbre that Pulp seldom touched upon.

Rather than the hectic furore of Common People and Disco 2000, Jarvis's solo offerings are calm but poignant musings on life and love to make you think rather than shake. But that is not to say Jarvis has lost his sense of humour. Each track was spliced together by a witticism, such as "I love Christmas, except for the baggy skin on satsumas that look like excess skin on a fat person," and "Sorry about the no smoking policy - especially since we're using a ludicrous amount of smoke effects up here".

And although his trademark theatrical mimes and clawlike hand gestures are ever present, Pulp's spangly magic has been replaced by an offering perhaps more appropriate for an audience that has grown a little more mature, too.