Jarvis - Jarvis (Rough Trade)
5/5
By: Michael Lewin
It's long been a policy - never stated and often barely even consciously considered - of mine when writing about music to give as little as possible room to the discussion of lyrics.
It rends me apart to admit that this is nothing more than the purest and most simple of idiocies on my part - arrogant and dismissive of what I always considered the childlike scribblings of self-absorbed and barely literate, now I find myself prostrate before the gangling, spindly legs of a dandyish archaism of a man. Thank you, Jarvis, for making me feel like a cock.
It's not that I've never come across great lyrics before - many's the time I've bent the ear of some young lady in the mistaken belief she cares about the genius of the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt and the wry Wildeisms strewn through his songs when actually the flutter in her eyes is not flirtatious interest in my mental and physical prowesses but rather the effects of a few too many, er... stimulants.
But then I sat down to write about 'Jarvis'. I knocked out the first paragraph, because I knew I had to acknowledge the fella had a way with words, and decided to annoint him one of the rule-proving exceptions, and so had to justify my rule. I couldn't. I just couldn't. I choked, I spluttered, my brain somersaulted and came to rest flat on its face, with the addition of a splendid broken nose. I couldn't do it.
Ass. Anyway, enough about my own inadequacies and foolhardiness: Jarvis and 'Jarvis' show what the best lyrics can achieve, how the actual words themselves can elevate the mood of a song into that personal space that lies somewhere in and behind your chest, where it resonates and soothes and assuages your tensions and you know you're listening to something luscious, something gorgeous, some description all sybillant and warm and human.
"Build yourself a castle..." he begins on 'I Will Kill Again', and a lilting piano and smooth strings follow his instruction - a mesmeric feeling of drifting down a river on a log raft, lying on ones back. A dream-like build-up that matches the lyrics' suggestion of an insubstantial and wasteful desire that is perhaps attainable. On reaching the pronouncement of that brilliantly ominous title two thrids through, you realise that such a castle will never be built, and rather than threatening you gentle listeners with murder, he's chastising himself for the wastes of hope and talent, a paean to ennui redolent in tragi-smaltz daydream of a song that floats away rather than ever attaining a climax. The most powerful moment comes with Phillip Glass string skitters in the distance as he bellows the question, "Wouldn't it be nice/ For all the world to live in peace?", then nearly attaining bombast for the announcement that "People tell me what a real nice guy you are"... then the hope fades, the title is sung and everything is done.
The songs are elegant, both moreish and MORish, but never in a manner that could be condemned after even the most casual inspection. Expect to raise eyebrows should an unsuspecting new rave flatmate walk in on you pulling fanciful and ungainly moves alone in your room, but this is music of a depth you'd rarely encounter.
[Actually, to prove the point, let me entertain you with a little anecdote: I've had the unbelievably sardonic rock'n'sneer track 'Fat Children' on repeat for the last twenty or thirty minutes. I keep getting up and wandering around, only to find myself dancing like one giant hip every time it starts again; I think - this track is fantastic! What the hell is it? Then I realised I've just listened to it five times. Maybe I've just the memory of a psychotic case, but if you'll excuse me I must dance a little more before finishing this off. Regardless: that's some serious replay value, baby.]
So...
Every song is itself, a unit singularly and part of a spectacular whole. There are hierarchies in each of them, unique to them individually; textures and instrumental lines placed atop each other in a complimentary manner, the song equivalent of autistically skilled Tetris-playing. They work together, but the emergent surfaces of all the songs are the raucous or melancholy peaks of words and phrases. They're the guy at the top of the human pyramid, if you see what I mean: if he's not there, you gotta wonder what purpose such a feat of prowess and strength without the decisive final accomplishment.
And god bless the man for never, ever leaving songs half-finished, for never missing, for always being well aware that - with either interpretation - an inch is as good as a mile. While personal taste and opinion may dictate favourites and disappointments, every track is as solid, epic and soaring as the previous, or its successor. From beginning to end, these are huge and rich pop songs.
Each deserves a plaque, an effervescent eulogy the moment the track reaches a conclusion and you have the sense that it did something to you. 'Black Magic', however, is the last I'll mention. Not my favourite, but of such stature and splendour that to not grant it high praise is to commit vile felony.
Once more, let us praise the manner in which the words grant boundless power to the music. The percussive beat that propels the song, from the moment it kicks in, has the exact same momentous sense of EVENT screaming from it that the obvious influence of the Ronettes' 'Be My Baby' brings. And, as ever, Jarvis is not far behind explaining the sensation
"I woke up in the morning/And all the bells were ringing/My eyes good see the glory, baby/Could hear the Sunday Singing/ You only get to see the light/ Just one time in your life/ Black Magic/ That blows your mind away."
Which, on reading, is simple and hardly suggestive of genius. But the power of enunciation, the manner in which it both, as I said, explains the song and predicts it, bringing in the jubilant bells of the first verse and after the second giving a brief, raucous moment of feedback equivalent to the fleeting euphoria he's singing of. The entire song is build with the intent of power and thrust of the perfectly chosen, unspecific "Black Magic" that anyone can happily, and uniquely to themselves, name.
So, here I kneel, prostrate before La Cocker, begging his forgiveness for being so sightless. I wait awhile, expecting forgiveness or remonstrance - and then I realise he's already granted me salvation in the shape of circular plastic, titled 'Jarvis'.
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