JARV IS, Jarvis Cocker

Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool, 05/11/2021…

So, on a cold damp bonfire night, I’m walking along the Dock Road in Liverpool heading towards The Invisible Wind Factory. 

As I watch the pretty explosions in the night sky above the city centre, I brace myself for an explosive evening inside this stylish venue, I’m glad to get in here out of the cold and the very real wind outside, and I’m looking forward to seeing JARV IS, Jarvis Cocker’s band that was formed in 2018 who released their album ‘Beyond The Pale‘ last year, finally they’re getting a chance to tour it.

I’ve not seen Jarvis play since I saw him play that legendary Glastonbury gig with his old band Pulp in 1995, I wonder how he’ll be tonight playing to the 1300 packed into this stylish snazzy venue. 

I take my place on the balcony above the stage and wait in anticipation for Sheffield’s finest, but before that, we have our support band, the delightfully named Jockstrap, a duo who are up from London. We have George Ellery on keyboards and occasional vocals with Taylor Skye on lead vocals, violin, and some electric preset fiddly stuff that I don’t understand. These guys look great on stage and they have an interesting sound, they certainly don’t sound the way their name made me imagine they’d sound. Their music is sophisticated and it’s electro/synth pop but very retro sounding too, and when I say retro I mean, 1930’s mixing in with the ’60’s and the ’80’s maybe. I get a bit of an ‘Electric Dreams’ vibe from them, a sprinkling of St.Vincent too and Taylor sounds like Sarah Cracknell at times. She has a sweet voice and she dances like some kind of “disco witch” from 1967, waving her violin bow in the air. They have the full attention of the crowd for sure, everybody is watching this quirky duo whose songs are a bit nuts (in a nice way), with loads of tempo changes, violin solos, vocoder vocals that make Taylor’s voice sound really deep and big huge throbbing “ravey” beats, you never know what’s coming next with these guys, and I like it. Highlights tonight are ‘The City’ and ‘Acid’, be sure to check Jockstrap out if you want to see something a bit different, they deffo entertained us tonight.

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The venue is rammed and everyone is wanting our man Jarvis now, we don’t have to wait too long as JARV IS are on early, just after 8pm.

The first song is ‘She’s A Lady’ and Cocker comes on to darkness with a couple of lasers booming and a lone violin playing. He just stands there throwing shapes, twig-like arms, giving us  Elvis moves while dressed like a 1970’s geography teacher. He says that he’s missed us and the crowd shouts back that they’ve missed him too.‘House Music All Night Long’ is one helluva tune, I’m amazed at how fit Jarvis is, everyone is dancing along and the light show behind the band is in full flow now, amazing. Jarvis tells us how it’s nice to have human contact again after all the lockdowns and he opens up a tub of Cadbury’s Heros and throws handfuls of them into the audience, telling us that they are edible fireworks, as he makes some whooshing noises using his mic, what a legend. He turns to his band and jokingly says that the crowd are like hungry pigs before they go into the aptly titled ‘Fat Children’, this song is a real rocker and Cocker is throwing shapes again between the strobe lights. Our main man takes a well earned break for a few minutes to catch his breath and tells us how he really likes Liverpool and that he has lots of friends here. He tells us about the first time he played here at a festival in Sefton Park back in ’87, with his old band Pulp and how it was really sad seeing the palms almost breaking out the top of the old dilapidated palm house, he says he’s happy to see that the park and the palms are much better cared for nowadays. Cocker says he visited Williamson’s tunnels a few years back, and he remembers someone from the crowd who was there that same day, he shakes her hand and dedicates the next song, ‘Big Julie’ to her.

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Soon more chocolates are thrown into the crowd, Jarvis even throws one directly into some guy’s gob, which gets a great cheer from the punters watching. JC really knows how to connect with his audience, we could be in his front room here, just having a laugh with some cool tunes breaking up the chat, he’s a great raconteur.

‘Swanky Modes’ is a song about Camden or a song about Jarvis visiting a clothes shop there and noticing a guy shooting up on the pavement outside, “Some fell by the wayside, some moved up to Teeside, some still scoring cocaine, some laid up with back pain, ain’t it sad when your dreams outlast you?”, sings Jarvis. I think he sounds a bit scouse on this one as he sings “How about you get on this?” repeatedly at the end of the song. Next up is ‘Cunts Are Still Running The World’, but before it gets going, Jarvis reads us a poem about class division and poverty and how the people at the top don’t care about the people struggling at the bottom, this gets a huge cheer. Cocker sings about how thing’s haven’t changed and cunts are still running the world. As this one finishes our crowd sing “Nah nah nah nah na na nahhhhh… Maggie’s in the mud, In the mud, Maggie’s in the mud!!!” to the tune of ‘Give It Up by KC & The Sunshine Band, it’s belted out loud, we could be on The Gwladys Street or The Kop here and Jarvis loves it, the drummer even joins in for a bit. The band includes a harpist and a violinist and I actually think this setup is as good as Pulp if not better. ‘Must I Evolve?’ talks about how we are devolving as a species, a great tune with Cocker asking lots of questions with his bandmates answering him. This is a big favourite with the crowd and everyone is joining in, singing and dancing. The song has some nice violin and Jarvis tells us he’s goin’ swimming in some primordial soup as he takes us on a journey through time.

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Jarv’s has been doing this for over four decades now and he is a sharp songwriter who delivers clever, but funny observational song lyrics. I’ve really enjoyed JARV IS tonight and I’d describe their sound as “Space-Rock.”The band leaves the stage and JC thanks us all for a great evening. 

Fortunately, we do get an encore. Our front-man comes back on, beer in hand, to a rapturous reception. He tells us that he’s visited Lennon’s and McCartney’s childhood homes while he’s been here and says that he found it very moving and says that everybody is still living off the ripples that The Beatles made with their music.

We get ‘Children Of The Echo’ and then ‘Further Complications’, a “foot-stomping” rocker before Jarvis asks us if we like to visit the cinema or “the flix” as he calls it.  He leads us into ‘Aline’ a song written for the movie ‘The French Dispatch’ and it’s a fitting end to tonight’s events, watching Jarvis standing there singing in French, what a guy, Cocker is one cool dude, he’s been amazingly entertaining this evening and it’s been great seeing him up close in a smaller venue, (smaller in comparison to Glastonbury festival anyway). He seems like a sound fella who is very much in touch with his audience. 

If you’re looking for some boss music with some witty banter and some great stories thrown in, go and see JARV IS sometime soon, this is the best “Bommy Night” I’ve had in years!

David Lancaster, 05/11/2021.