AMG Review of Further Complications

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Perhaps it was inevitable that Jarvis Cocker would find no peace in domesticity. It may have treated him well for a brief period, resulting in the quite brilliant mature pop of his 2006 solo debut, but no other pop star has been as singularly sex-obsessed as Jarvis, so it was just a matter of time before his attentions wandered elsewhere...and so they have on his wildly depraved second album, Further Complications. Right from the start with the thumping "Angela," Jarvis has flesh on the mind, just as he did during the days of His 'n' Hers with its songs about sisters, virginity, and fetishes, but where those songs were underscored by the vague melancholy of somebody who has only glimpsed his fantasy and frets that he will never see it again, the songs here pulsate with perversion, a middle-aged man making damn sure that he's going to get with a tight 23-year-old body yet again; it's the sound of a fetishist turned sexual omnivore. Fittingly, the sound of the record is completely changed, with only the closing "You're in My Eyes (Discosong)" echoing back to the louche, languid urban fantasies of "Deep Fried in Kelvin." The rest is all gnarled, ugly hard rock, dredging up ghosts of the Stooges and the Spiders from Mars, dressing them in stylish second-hand clothes that are razored to ribbons by Steve Albini's typically unflinching production. Under his cold glare, all the madness of Further Complications is pushed right to the surface -- all the stuttering, slashing guitars, Steve Mackey's wailing sax, Jarvis' obsessive, compulsive carnality. If he has any regrets leaving the settled bohemian pop professor of Jarvis behind, it only surfaces on "Slush," a dirgelike meditation on global warming overshadowed by the hedonistic riot of Further Complications at large, a record that does its best to live up to Cocker's "never said I was deep, but I am profoundly shallow" proclamation. He's denied his id for too long, so the dam bursts here and it's impossible not to happily wallow in the flood of filth unleashed by Further Complications.