Paperjam

The Jarvis Cocker Album

Music // Jim // 5th December 2006

For the last few weeks I’ve been promising myself that I’m going to cut down on the drinking. The recommended limit for men is three to four units a day (ie a couple of pints) with two or three days a week abstinence. Jesus, that just sounds awful, doesn’t it? But even though I’m not exactly an alcoholic I should really try and curb my intake a touch, the haggard visage and comedy waistline are surely warnings of some sort.

It was going really well this weekend, popped out for a social Guinness or two on Friday. Did some shopping on Saturday including the new Jarvis album, “Jarvis”. Then out for a bite to eat with Nick, Chris and Claire, all very civilised, a sip of wine, a small beer and only my most witty and socially acceptable anecdotes about masturbation.

Oh no, fast forward several hours and things have taken a turn for the drunken. Polishing off the vodka by mixing it with ginger ale (which sort of works) and then falling flat on my face while performing the highly complicated and challenging manoeuvre known as "taking ones trousers off". Ouch, that’s going to hurt in the morning. Actually it is the morning.

So, Sunday brings one of the worst hangovers I’ve had in absolutely ages (bad pint, no doubt), which nicely illustrates why the drinking has to throttle back. On a positive note “Jarvis” is absolutely superb listening when you are feeling shite. It is cynical, misanthropic, quite catchy and strangely relaxing, having done the research it is definitely the perfect soundtrack for:

- Lying in bed, wondering whether you are going to be sick and, if indeed you are, whether you can be bothered to walk all of three metres to the bathroom.
- Ignoring the phone until at least two in the afternoon.
- Somehow making it to the sofa, putting on some socks you find stuffed down the side of it, then staying there, virtually motionless, for three hours.
- Coming up with what has to be the least believable hangover cure ever.
- Talking absolute, Olympic standard shite for longer than you previously thought possible.
- Being surprised (and not in a nice way) by the state of your own farts.

The Loss Adjuster (Excerpt 1)
Twenty seconds of piano to get us all in the mood.

Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time
Look girls, most men are basically shite, take advantage of them but then dump them flat, presumably for a more sensitive, intellectual type. Possibly someone six and a half feet tall who wears glasses, hangs around on stairways in Paris and writes big pounding glam type songs abut the whole sorry affair.

Black Magic
An ode to everyone’s favourite chocolate selection box, sounds like a slowed down version of Should I Stay Or Should I Go? re-recorded by a gun-toting Phil Spector. Has what can only be described as a big bell solo and a small bell end. Could this be a Christmas number one? No, of course it fucking couldn’t.

Heavy Weather
More big echoey action, for a catchy, crooning number which sounds like it should probably be a soppy love song except for all the mentions of death and destruction. “There she blows”, yells Jarvis, like the ponciest pirate of all time. What a hero.

I Will Kill Again
He’s got dull middle aged alpha males in his sights now, especially those with acoustic guitars. Fair enough if you ask me. Careful when you are surfing for porn late at night, Jarvis has forced his way through the kitchen door and is sneaking up behind you like a ninja with a cheese wire.

Echoes of the Flaming Lips halfway through, well a bit anyway.

Baby’s Coming Back To Me
All very pleasant but as dull as ditchwater, in Norwich – And that is pretty fucking dull. Can’t be arsed.

Fat Children
Thankfully, things go vaguely punk, for a modern re-working of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. In this case a spectral Jarv has been done in by a bunch of ASBO’d up lard arses. The police were busy “elsewhere putting bullets in some guy’s head for no particular reason”. The chorus goes “AAAAAHHHHHH aaaahhhhhh AHHHHHH aahhhhh”, and is totally ace.

Has a noise in it that sounds a bit like Save A Prayer by Duran Duran towards the end, which is funny because, in the entire history of music, that is probably the song that Fat Children sounds least like.

From Auschwitz To Ipswich
Cosy fifties stylings, with a sing-along chorus about how we are all essentially evil and the world is completely screwed. Kind of like The Lucifer Principle mixed with The Power of Nightmares and set to a Roy Orbison backing track. Throws in a mention of a Frigidaire, which has got to be a first for a song that also name checks a concentration camp in the title.

Disney Time
Creepy effort about the skewed view of the world put out by Disney. Apparently you can’t work there if you have a beard. So yeah, fuck them.

Tonite
More twangy fifties guitar and breathy singing from Jarvis. “Somebody falls in love. Somebody falls from a window sill. But you, you just sit tight, hiding out from life.”, Oh yes, this is one for when you are stuck in on a Friday evening with nothing to do and no-one to go out with. I would imagine.

Big Julie
Spoken word intro before we are back into classic Jarv territory; the caustic tale of a young outsider at odds with the world, while getting touched up and perved at by her Sunday school teacher. Makes me think of Inside Susan, although this is something of a piano ballad, rather than a Pulp shuffler.

The Loss Adjuster (Excerpt 2)
Another bit of piano tinkling

Quantum Theory
Jarvis has had enough of the sickness and is off to a parallel dimension where things are better, for example; fish don’t have bones (which must be a bit of a nightmare for them really). Seems really cinematic and epic at the end where, despite an album of telling us otherwise, Jarv assures me there is somewhere that everything is going to be alright - Just not here.

To prove this point, after half an hour of silence, Jarvis comes floating back out of the speakers to remind us in an anthemic manner that “To be blunt, in the fewest of words: Cunts are still running the world.” Quite.

Other great albums to listen to on a Sunday when you have a blinding headache, dodgy guts and a subtle feeling of guilt:

- Deserters Songs by Mercury Rev
- Tower Of Love by Jim Noir
- Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space by Spiritialized
- Screamadelica by Primal Scream
- A Northern Soul by The Verve
- Violator by Depeche Mode

Plus of course absolutely anything by Tindersticks, second album probably the most suitable.

Jarvlinks...

Jarvspace

It's his MySpace Page, plays Running The World on loading, turn your speakers off if you are at work.

Jarvis Review In The Guardian

Enough of this childish shit from me, what do real reviewers think?