 | | Jarvis (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
Make no mistake, he may have dropped his surname and his former bandmates, but very little has changed about Jarvis Cocker; he’s still all about the one-liners and the inter-song banter. Which is probably just as well because, thanks to the drums and the bass overpowering his tunes until they eventually became unlistenable, without that humour, he might not have come through his first appearance at the Academy in more than a decade unscathed. It started so well. A sell-out crowd eagerly welcomed the ultimate indie hero and Jarvis threw himself through ace versions of Fat Children and Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time. But then a wheel came loose. Maybe the sound man fell asleep or simply hadn’t the lower end hearing to notice the problem, but the bass started to move up through the mix. Heavy Weather somehow survived, not least because of Mr Cocker’s sign languaged rain at the close, but the same couldn’t be said of From A To I or a very lumpen version of Disney Time.  | | Jarvis (pic: Shirlaine Forrest) |
Indeed, by the time Black Magic surged out a finale, the feeling of being thumped in the chest by the sound had all but stopped any enjoyment of the actual songs. Things may have been reined in for the encore, a great Running The World and a woeful cover of Magazine’s Shot From Both Sides, but the (hearing) damage had been done. Still, there was comfort to be found in his wit. He regaled the assembled with a few things that annoy him – it turns out it’s toilet roll dispensers and microphone techniques on trains – and followed the discovery of a bra on one of his monitors with a simple "Who’s is this? It’ll be at lost property later." He might know he’s loved but he’s still not a comfortable sex symbol. For all that though, perhaps the most striking thing about seeing him solo is just how much it looks and sounds like he’s still in Pulp. The hair may be longer, the glasses may be thicker, but in truth, Jarvis is less of a new beginning and more like a franchised TV spin-off. | 
