Bleep

Beyond The Pale, the first studio LP from Jarvis Cocker in over a decade, sees the legendary Pulp frontman leading a new group called JARV IS (get it?). On this album we find Cocker making some of the most sonically bold music of his career, maintaining the immediacy, wit and guile which has always been a feature of his work yet bringing some more adventurous textures into play. While the pose he cuts on tracks such as ‘Save The Whale’ has plenty of Serge Gainsbourg’s loucheness about it, his lyrics are frequently surreal, coming at problems both age-old and modern from unexpected angles. Musically, Beyond The Pale does something similar, couching some typically chic songcraft within expansive and psychedelic arrangements which draw from Krautrock and, at points, the nervier end of modern psychedelia - Melt Yourself Down, Beak> and the like. It all makes for a delightfully unexpected triumph.