Much more The Wall than Radiohead ever was, as I put it recently elsewhere. And much better than The Wall at the same time, but really, was that ever going to be too hard?
There haven't been as many spectacularly successful demolitions of a particular public image for a long time than this album, turning the Jarvis Cocker of 1995, young cutting-edge social commentator pop star, into the one of 1998, middle-aged if not old sexual pseudo-predator weirdo. Except that both images were of course from the same source, and that Jarvis just decided to write his own particular posh hotel room alienation blues album before doing it for real, I'm guessing. Though perhaps I guess wrong.
So lyrically, the bite and the snarl and the reflection are all still there, but we'll get to that -- right now there's the question of the big absence, namely Russell Senior and his violin, among many other things besides. Rather than replace, Pulp adjusted, and whereas you could tell, say, that His 'n' Hers grew out of a live performance space in the end, here the band merrily throw that particular caution to the wind. Successfully? Hard to say at first, because "Party Hard" seems a little too rockish at points, however intentionally so, and studio rockish at that, party music for those who don't really party anymore -- but again, isn't that the point of the record, perhaps?
And "Dishes" melts on an arrangement to die for, "Seductive Barry" pushes things low, low, way low, and the Vocoder vocals are just so, the title track sports a sample and isn't content to be necessarily subtle about it (or is it?) -- everything's a little florid here as a result, but that just makes things all the more interesting as a result. Form follows function, perhaps. So "A Little Soul" seems like an atypical Motown tribute -- as with all such things these days, it obviously doesn't quite work in intent, except I don't think the intent here was something along the lines of Michael Bolton, so it does work. Maybe.
As said before about Cocker and company, though, for once the lyrics are actually interesting and good when it comes to music as opposed to being useful timekillers. And I could endlessly quote them and quote them again, from the way he softly says "I am not Jesus but I have the same initials" to "we were brought up on the Space Race, now they expect you to clean toilets" in "Glory Days." So while Roger Waters just pissed in a hole, Jarvis turned around, created art out of psychic offal and then looked for a new identity. Smart guy.