Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 18/05/09
Label: Rough Trade

Interviewed on "The Andrew Marr Show" towards the end of last year, the most fondly remembered of all our Britpop peers (even if no one buys his records anymore), Lord Jarvis Cocker, attempted to explain how he writes his songs by reminding himself of something Leonard Cohen once said: "The art that you produce is like the ash that's left when the fire of your life is burning as it should...I think any kind of creation has to be a by-product of what you do in your everyday life."

That being so, Jarvis's life doesn't sound like it's going quite as swimmingly as he'd like right now. His 2006 debut solo album was full of despair at the world, calling on individuals to take responsibility for everything from climate change to obesity, and to take offence that "c*nts are still running the world." It was witty, bilious, yet optimistic and ultimately defiant, Jarvis's magic ingredients in Pulp. His solo follow-up, though, is a more personal affair, dissecting the onset of middle-age, physical decrepitude and the end-game of marriage (he split from his wife not long after finishing this).

He's not complaining, you understand. As Jarvis sings - rather meanly, it must be said - on the titular opener, artists occasionally require complications in order to write and "cultivate a personality". So, to a soundtrack of clanging, rhythmic guitars reminiscent of his "engineer" Steve Albini's band Shellac, Jarvis tells us that "life is just a carrier bag, fill it and the straps will snap." Here he is, then, broken, angry and ready to spill the painful truths he's been lugging about.

On the stoner-rock "Angela" there's concern about appealing to younger ladies now he's without spouse, he recasts himself as a selfish, blokey misanthrope ("I am profoundly shallow, my lack of knowledge is vast and my horizons narrow") on the horn-soaked anthem "I Never Said I Was Deep", and the cavernous, Clinic-like "Pilchard" rocks with a metal guitar motif and much muttering, all of which puts to shame the lightweight glam rock of half his debut effort. "Homewrecker!" thumps like The Stooges and "F*ckingsong" and "Slush" have Albini's noise-enhancing paws all over them.

It's "Leftovers" on which Jarvis gets it all out, though. Swinging soulfully and calling to mind Lou Reed, he admits the real fear in all of us - to be "trapped in a body that is failing me". As much terrified of being alone as he is about wearing a beat-up old body, he offers himself to all takers before admitting it's "no mouth-watering proposition". Not so, Jarv. Brooding and unhappy or not, he's still very much a catch.

    by Chris Parkin