Jarvis Cocker's Maturing, and It Shows on Pulp's We Love Life

Jarvis Cocker was never the greasy-haired kid who'd take a punch to the mouth from the thick-neck in the varsity jacket and just fall to his knees. He was the kid who took the punch and fell to his knees, then sent a smile through the blood to the thick-neck's girlfriend. She'd smile back when her boyfriend wasn't looking.

Jarvis isn't going to seduce you so much as counsel you into his bed. He'll convince you that a ride atop Jarvis will be downright therapeutic, especially if you've recently taken up with a man who happens to bear the misfortune of being "Not Jarvis." Don't cross him. He relishes vengeance. His is a revenge of living well. And loving well. And dancing well. And shagging your enemies' wives can also prove quite effective. Like any man who is apparently swimming in trim, Jarvis makes you wonder, "What's he got going on?" It's the same thing that sets Pulp apart from the Britpop circus. It's sincerity, or at least a talent for making you buy the horseshit he's whispering in your ear.

This is the band that, on their single "Disco 2000," borrowed the arrangement from Laura Branigan's "Gloria" without the slightest irony. They just thought it rocked. And it was sincerity that managed to pull off "Help the Aged," possibly their silliest song to date, on which Jarvis recommends that young women take care of the elderly by fucking them.

Britpop was never about sincerity. Which might be why it took Pulp over a decade to find success. Jarvis' whispered monologues and back-alley fairytales always rang true. Adolescent gropings and picnics by the stream had the authenticity of memory, or at least of a particularly textured fantasy.

By the mid-90s, Damon Albarn was woo-hooing his way into the commercial jingle racket and Noel Gallagher was building wonderwalls of hooky nonsense. And Pulp released Different Class, an album that demonstrated why the Blur and Oasis feud was far more entertaining than their CDs. Different Class offered more shag-and-tell but also contained "Common People," a pop anthem that could make a Glastonbury full of the misshapen burn the stage to the ground.

Jarvis had a bit of a bad time when he decided to follow up Different Class with a concept album about porn. This Is Hardcore was packaged with a CD booklet sporting a pictorial of an adult film shoot. The photos evoked a cold sterility. Band members sat in the background, watching with either indifference or sadness as the actors tried to maintain the facade of eroticism. And the centerfold was Jarvis apparently enjoying a drink with the plasticine-faced male star of the film.

The erotic fantasies and seductive pleas promised by that pictorial were few and far between on the album. Instead, This Is Hardcore was mostly Jarvis panicking about being old and getting older. That photo with the porn star was a jab at himself. He was having a drink with his alter ego. As a pop star well into his 30s, he feared that everyone could tell he was trying to fake his way through it, and his efforts could only be met with either indifference or sadness.

One album full of introspective self-pity is embarrassing enough. Two in a row would be downright American. With Pulp's We Love Life, Jarvis has thankfully found peace. Never one to shrug off the obvious metaphor, he's chosen to thread the album with allusions to Nature. "Weeds," the disc's opener, is essentially a retread of the Different Class outsider manifesto. "Weeds II (the origin of the species)" is Jarvis yammering on and on about more of the same, but it's in a breathy monologue and it gets you really hot even though it's a bunch of nonsense.

We Love Life is best when it settles down. "The Trees," the first single, is a sweet little lovelorn lament: "Yeah, the trees, those useless trees/They never said that you were leaving." "Wickerman" contemplates an underground river with the same passion he used to expend on getting a girl to raise her pencil skirt. On "The Birds in Your Garden," Jarvis listens to Mother Nature and she of course tells him to go back inside and nail the chick in the bedroom. But there is quite a surprise on "Roadkill." On this track, Jarvis drops the quick nature metaphors and allows himself to be simply meditative. The song is subtle, and it's one of Pulp's most beautiful.

Jarvis is maturing and he's holding on to his sincerity. On the track "I Love Life," how uncool is he to sing, "I love my life," and mean it? But he's never cared. Always the outsider, meaning it was the only cool Jarvis ever had.