Do you know what a pain it is to write an entire record review only to realize you got it wrong? Such was the case with Jarvis Cocker’s new band Jarv Is and their debut LP, 2020’s Beyond the Pale, on which the former Pulp front man abandons the scathing commentaries on England’s caste system and squeamish-making mini-dramas about sex that made Pulp the angriest–and most intellectually rewarding–of Britpop’s angry young bands.
Abandoned for what, you ask? Evolution. Evolution! What, did Jarvis run into Charles Darwin on the streets of Sheffield? Find himself locked in a room for six months with nothing to read but On the Origin of Species? I couldn’t tell you, but what he have on our hands here is a concept album on our single-celled crawl from the primordial ooze to the perpetual doubt machines we’ve become. Needless to say I hated the damn thing. If this was Cocker’s idea of musical evolution, thought I, give me Devo.
The LP’s title is apt–we’ve left behind our Paleolithic past, and our staggering maltreatment of the planet we live on is definitely beyond the pale. But what I loved about Pulp were Cocker’s sleazy character studies and critiques of England’s upper crust. And it’s not only the subject matter that have gone the way of the dodo.
On Beyond the Pale Cocker and Company give up on their patented brand of disco-infused pop rock in favor of a species of world-music influenced art rock that brings the solo David Byrne or–god help us, Peter Gabriel–to mind. “Save the Whale,” for one, sounds like Leonard Cohen singing to a ham-fisted reggae beat at a benefit concert for narwhals organized by the Indigo Girls and Sting. “Common People” come home!
So, yeah, I hated Beyond the Pale at first. Then my hatred turned to mild liking, and then to grudging respect. There is, I came to realize, a method to Cocker’s madness. On “Am I Missing Something?” he goes on about standing on the brink of extinction and I yawn–I’ve heard the same ecological twaddle from the likes of Jackson Browne. But what Cocker does–and it’s critical–is leap from our caveman origins to the telling details of where we are now. “The last stage of human evolution,” he fears, is “happening on the streets of Luton.” He even demonstrates some of the old Cocker wit with the lines, “I don’t wanna dance with the Devil/But do you mind if I tap my foot?”
The same goes for the Q and A that is “Must I Evolve?” On which he asks the damn question repeatedly, and an annoying choir cheeps repeatedly, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” Initially it drove me mad, as did his musing on the big bang and sundry other questions of cosmic import, but as the song’s industrial underpinnings drove their way into my skull like a pneumatic drill and Cocker sang, “Dragging my knuckles, listening to Frankie Knuckles/Someone has lost their drugs in the long grass” I took notice. It’s details like these that set Cocker’s philosophical and spiritual musings apart, and upon repeated listening my enthusiasm grew.
On “Sometimes I Am Pharaoh” Cocker assumes the role of an ancient god still living amongst us. “I see you,” he sings, “But you don’t see me/I watch you when you’re eating fried food in front of famous buildings.” Cocker then launches into a critique of the emptiness of modern life that brings to mind T.S. Eliot’s “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” For Egypt’s Pharaoh is every bit as capable of inspiring dread as Jehovah–”I am always watching,” he sings, adding “I’ll make you jump.”
“Children of the Echo” trucks in lyrical generalities, and it’s got world music written all over it, but upon repeated listening I’ve grown to like it. Cocker returns to the question of both our origins and God, singing, “I am the product of all my ancestors both living and dead/I have created an all-seeing, all-knowing, almighty entity,” before adding cynically, “who does not care about me one bit.” He’s gone from all-knowing Pharaoh to existential everyman on a futile quest for knowledge and meaning–”I always thought there was so much more to learn/But the echo fades, with diminishing returns.”
The LP’s biggest detour from the LP’s concept is the pandemic-themed “House Music All Night Long,” which came about by coincidence–Cocker wrote the song before we found ourselves in quarantine dancing by ourselves, which kinda makes you wonder if the guy’s clairvoyant. Forget about the clubs, he sings, “Saturday night cabin fever in house nation/This is one nation under a roof/Ain’t that the truth,” adding, “It’s serious.” I’m not particularly enthralled by the song itself–the tempo lacks the get up and go of good house music, and I’ll ll take Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself”any day. But there’s no denying it captures the mood of the times.
I will always prefer the Jarvis Cocker of old to the one we now find ourselves with; the world’s always in need of a scathing social critic. But to return to the theme of the LP, Cocker has evolved, and to quote our walking toxic waste dump of a President, “It is what it is.” The Jarvis Cocker I love seems to have gone the way of the carrier pigeon, but the new Cocker has things to say, and they’re well worth hearing.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
