Post by vastar iner on Mar 5, 2016 0:29:14 GMT 1
The first word of the Iliad is “wrath”; that of the Odyssey is “man”; that of the Aeneid is “arms”. All words that will be the leitmotif of those epics. We start here with “mis-shapes”. This is Pulp and the Pulpiverse. After toiling without reward for ages, suddenly they are in bloom. The band or their fans? Yes. It has finally happened. And they gallop straight into an epic affirmation of being different, being yourself, being indifferent. Nerdvana noir. Oh my God. This is f***ing brilliant. The call to arms of the unpossessed.
There are two different approaches that the male chimpanzee has to mating. One, you dominate a troop and attack anyone who goes with your babe. Two, you wait for someone to take on the troop leader, and while he’s busy you slip a favoured female a quick one. The first needs brute force, the second brains. “Pencil Skirt”. This is the second method. After the asthma-forcing rush of the opening, this one is more considered and insidious, like the approach to the eponymously-outfitted female.
She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. The best beginning for a song ever. The song of the nineties. Not just defining the era, but the absolute single best track released in that decade. It still sounds fresh, brilliant, enervating, ecstatic, utterly, utterly glorious. “I wanna sleep with common people, like you…but she didn’t…
Understand…”
Perfect tune, perfect lyrics, perfect story, perfect wordplay. This would have been the greatest number 1 single ever. I pray for Ice Age winters to wipe out the cretins who wanted a Geordie fish-murdering midget and his gormless Habsburg-jawed mate.
And we segue into something darker, even more noirish, the Bond film manque. Starts out like Anton Karas before mid-era Moore. One thing that it brings to mind instantly is Radiohead. Especially the lyrics.
You see you should take me seriously. Very seriously indeed.
Cause I've been sleeping with your wife for the past sixteen weeks
Smoking your cigarettes, drinking your brandy,
messing up the bed you chose together.
And in all that time I just wanted you to come home unexpectedly one afternoon
And catch us at it in the front room.
You see I spy for a living and I specialise in revenge
On taking the things I know will cause you pain.
I can't help it, I was dragged up.
As against:
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Everything, everything, everything..
In its right place
In its right place
Right place
Where the f*** did everything go so, so, so wrong?
The Spanish-born Roman epigrammist Martial is one of the underrated poets of Silver Age Latin. His epigrams could deal with major subjects, but mostly they were the minutiae of Roman life; signed editions of his books, the stairs in his tower block, watering the wine, whatever. Often there was a twist in the final line. E.g.:
And Jarvis adopts the same technique in his homage to Laura Branigan. Again the kitchen sink drama of a working class childhood and an unrequited crush. At least until the proto-Friends-Reunited reunion in time for 2000. A happy ending? Yes. All the way until that killer final line.
The Beatles wrote about Eleanor Rigby. Died all alone. The Kinks about Susannah. Still waiting for that one man to come into her bedroom. The heroine of “Live Bed Show” does not even rate a name. The tragedy of the single life. It only affects one person. But for that one person it’s everything. And the yang to that yin follows. Because the protagonist has found someone. From a song about someone to a song about someone writing a song about someone. Not passively waiting but something changed. Did it change or did someone change it?
The last thing you would expect from Jarvis would be a paean to drugs. And “Sorted For Es And Wizz” isn’t. Despite Piers “Morgan” Moron trying to talk up a storm in the tabloids. Again that killer final line. “What if you never come down?” Was this robbed of a number 1 hit? I remember the media talking about it as being a surefire no. 1 based on the sales flashes. And doing a bit of digging, it was awarded silver in the week of release, and the bookies refused to take bets on it being a chart-topper. Yet it missed out to Simply f***ing Red. Simply f***ing Red! Is there anyone on the entire planet who listens to “Fairground” these days? Is there indeed anyone who ever listened to Mick Fuckall’s hypocritical sh*te other than as a backdrop to some f***ing canapé party? It seems Pulp’s destiny to be runner-up to people who actively reduced the level of human achievement.
OK. “Feeling Called Love”, can’t be bothered with the official orthography. Am I alone in hearing some Half Man Half Biscuit in the lyrics? It’s the closest to a duff track on the album, it’s trying perhaps too hard to explain the inexplicable. The album is much better with the minutiae of everyday life. Which we are back to with “Underwear”. That moment when you might just be about to have sex - but something goes wrong. Joe Orton meets Talbot Rothwell.
“Monday Morning” rallentandoes and crescendoes and calls back to the rest of the album. It is not the other mornings from the Velvets or the Mamas & Papas or even Monkees. That ethos is more in the final track, the meaninglessness of a dead humanity, a condemned music-hall joke, where the broken people go. The album opened with mis-shapes; it finishes with a bitter departure. Coda.
Overall. Robert Burns is revered as the Scots bard because he turned the ordinary into the epic. Poetry was meant to be for things like the Light Brigade or courtly love or suchlike. Not haggis or mice. Why not? Burns had no truck with such nonsense. In the same way Different Class glories in the secret life of the street, the party, the bedroom. Every song is an epyllion. Every song is exquisitely linguistic. And more often than not accompanied by the sort of galloping swagger that you would expect from the arrogance of Oasis rather than the insidious defiance of Jarvis Cocker.
It is the cleverest of the Britpop albums. It is the most sumptuous cri de couer of the overlooked. The mice that roared. It is suffused with empathy, sadness, happiness. It twists, it turns. It provokes and prods and inveigles. It is your very DNA. In one word, Different Class is magnificent.
Churlish to pick holes. A rare thing. A most palpable 10.
There are two different approaches that the male chimpanzee has to mating. One, you dominate a troop and attack anyone who goes with your babe. Two, you wait for someone to take on the troop leader, and while he’s busy you slip a favoured female a quick one. The first needs brute force, the second brains. “Pencil Skirt”. This is the second method. After the asthma-forcing rush of the opening, this one is more considered and insidious, like the approach to the eponymously-outfitted female.
She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. The best beginning for a song ever. The song of the nineties. Not just defining the era, but the absolute single best track released in that decade. It still sounds fresh, brilliant, enervating, ecstatic, utterly, utterly glorious. “I wanna sleep with common people, like you…but she didn’t…
Understand…”
Perfect tune, perfect lyrics, perfect story, perfect wordplay. This would have been the greatest number 1 single ever. I pray for Ice Age winters to wipe out the cretins who wanted a Geordie fish-murdering midget and his gormless Habsburg-jawed mate.
And we segue into something darker, even more noirish, the Bond film manque. Starts out like Anton Karas before mid-era Moore. One thing that it brings to mind instantly is Radiohead. Especially the lyrics.
You see you should take me seriously. Very seriously indeed.
Cause I've been sleeping with your wife for the past sixteen weeks
Smoking your cigarettes, drinking your brandy,
messing up the bed you chose together.
And in all that time I just wanted you to come home unexpectedly one afternoon
And catch us at it in the front room.
You see I spy for a living and I specialise in revenge
On taking the things I know will cause you pain.
I can't help it, I was dragged up.
As against:
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
Everything, everything, everything..
In its right place
In its right place
Right place
Where the f*** did everything go so, so, so wrong?
The Spanish-born Roman epigrammist Martial is one of the underrated poets of Silver Age Latin. His epigrams could deal with major subjects, but mostly they were the minutiae of Roman life; signed editions of his books, the stairs in his tower block, watering the wine, whatever. Often there was a twist in the final line. E.g.:
The heart of Aper’s wife was pierced by an arrow,
When Aper was testing his bow.
Aper knows his game.
When Aper was testing his bow.
Aper knows his game.
The Beatles wrote about Eleanor Rigby. Died all alone. The Kinks about Susannah. Still waiting for that one man to come into her bedroom. The heroine of “Live Bed Show” does not even rate a name. The tragedy of the single life. It only affects one person. But for that one person it’s everything. And the yang to that yin follows. Because the protagonist has found someone. From a song about someone to a song about someone writing a song about someone. Not passively waiting but something changed. Did it change or did someone change it?
The last thing you would expect from Jarvis would be a paean to drugs. And “Sorted For Es And Wizz” isn’t. Despite Piers “Morgan” Moron trying to talk up a storm in the tabloids. Again that killer final line. “What if you never come down?” Was this robbed of a number 1 hit? I remember the media talking about it as being a surefire no. 1 based on the sales flashes. And doing a bit of digging, it was awarded silver in the week of release, and the bookies refused to take bets on it being a chart-topper. Yet it missed out to Simply f***ing Red. Simply f***ing Red! Is there anyone on the entire planet who listens to “Fairground” these days? Is there indeed anyone who ever listened to Mick Fuckall’s hypocritical sh*te other than as a backdrop to some f***ing canapé party? It seems Pulp’s destiny to be runner-up to people who actively reduced the level of human achievement.
OK. “Feeling Called Love”, can’t be bothered with the official orthography. Am I alone in hearing some Half Man Half Biscuit in the lyrics? It’s the closest to a duff track on the album, it’s trying perhaps too hard to explain the inexplicable. The album is much better with the minutiae of everyday life. Which we are back to with “Underwear”. That moment when you might just be about to have sex - but something goes wrong. Joe Orton meets Talbot Rothwell.
“Monday Morning” rallentandoes and crescendoes and calls back to the rest of the album. It is not the other mornings from the Velvets or the Mamas & Papas or even Monkees. That ethos is more in the final track, the meaninglessness of a dead humanity, a condemned music-hall joke, where the broken people go. The album opened with mis-shapes; it finishes with a bitter departure. Coda.
Overall. Robert Burns is revered as the Scots bard because he turned the ordinary into the epic. Poetry was meant to be for things like the Light Brigade or courtly love or suchlike. Not haggis or mice. Why not? Burns had no truck with such nonsense. In the same way Different Class glories in the secret life of the street, the party, the bedroom. Every song is an epyllion. Every song is exquisitely linguistic. And more often than not accompanied by the sort of galloping swagger that you would expect from the arrogance of Oasis rather than the insidious defiance of Jarvis Cocker.
It is the cleverest of the Britpop albums. It is the most sumptuous cri de couer of the overlooked. The mice that roared. It is suffused with empathy, sadness, happiness. It twists, it turns. It provokes and prods and inveigles. It is your very DNA. In one word, Different Class is magnificent.
Churlish to pick holes. A rare thing. A most palpable 10.