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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.
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While his songwriting remains funny and incisive at 45, ostensibly ballsier numbers like 'Fuckingsong' and 'Angela' veer dangerously close to bar-band boneheadedness.
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It’s a wonderful surprise that Further Complications turns out to be such a reinvigorated piece of work. Much of this freshness must be down to the working methods of producer Steve Albini.
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It’s a success. Whether he keeps on in this vein or branches out even further, this album proves you can, in fact, teach an old letch new tricks.
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MojoMuch of it is unreconstructedly rockist. [Jun 20009, p.102]
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Q MagazineIt's a flinty rock record that lets Cocker's inner guitar beast out. [Jun 2009, p.118]
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The result is an absolute pleasure.
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Produced by Steve Albini, Cocker's excellent second solo disc sets hilariously over-the-top come-ons to bruising garage rock and woozy soul.
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Minor missteps aside, Further Complications is a bold, progressive step forward in the so far, so very good solo career of Jarvis Cocker.
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Under The RadarStripped down to the bone, the tracks here reveal the chinks in Cocker's armor with gloriously broken results. [Summer 2009, p.65]
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With Cocker frequently shouting to be heard over the rock racket, Further Complications is best when the music quietens, allowing the singer's glorious one-liners to be savoured.
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Unlike the best of those artists, however, the variety of ideas on Further Complication do not have a uniform success rate to bond them, and this is what stops the album short of reaching classic status.
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Steve Albini’s production retains some of the lushness Cocker favored on Pulp’s later albums and his solo debut, while investing it with a new punchiness. The approach ups the drama on Cocker’s tales of mid-life desire and failure.
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Neither Cocker's chewy structures nor his voice's subtle shadings are particularly well suited to Albini's you-are-there engineering. Fortunately, this collection of surging and reeling tunes is the former Pulp frontman's strongest since "Different Class."
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The raucousness of 'Homewrecker!' or the title track will come as a definite surprise to longtime Cocker watchers, though not necessarily a bad one. And the man's droll wordplay is still the dominating factor.
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The result is an album thick with a humid sense of decaying sexuality, a desperate voraciousness made even grimier by the gritty production.
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This newest Cocker incarnation restages this conflict in a way that establishes his continuing vitality and creativity and confirms that his sardonic wit has only sharpened with time.
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His brilliant, whispery, Gainsbourgh-like vocal delivery is replaced by base shouting, his hilarious wordplay reduced to grating, beat-poet-like observations.
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Initial listens may lead you to believe it’s a little non-descript, but there’s reward in perseverance.
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Long branded a thinking man's rocker, Cocker seems refreshed to simply bash through an electrifying set of tunes concerned more with appropriate vibe than surgical precision. It's deeper than you think.
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His new album, Further Complications--musically more immediate, lyrically more beleaguered--was engineered by Steve Albini, whose aesthetics dictate big drums, big guitars and small vocals. So Mr. Cocker is shouting to be heard, which only improves on his comic persona.
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It’s his most focused album in over a decade, and ought to absolutely kill onstage.
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This second solo album is so strong that a listening moves from why to why-not territory rather quickly.
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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).
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The meta quality of the immoral, libidinous singer refracted through unblinking irony feels too transparent for a songwriter of Cocker's depth.
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This is a record that's more intriguing than entertaining. Cocker's warmth and wit are in short supply, as is the sweeter side of his melodic gifts.
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Brit pop aesthete goes Rawk--sort of.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 12
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Mixed: 2 out of 12
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Negative: 0 out of 12
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Dec 26, 2017
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MatthewOMay 27, 2009Almost as great as his first solo album.