Jarv Is…, the new band led by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, are due to release their debut album next month. In anticipation of Beyond the Pale, fans have already grooved to lead single “House Music All Night Long”. Today, another track in “Save the Whale” is being shared.
Cocker’s smoky, sinewy bellow leads the way here, as various percussive bits pop and glow behind him. According to a statement from Cocker, the “title popped into my head as I was leaving the cinema after having seen Nick Broomfield’s Marianne & Leonard: Words Of Love documentary.”
“The ‘Smooth World, Wrinkly World’ section” — a trippy breakdown around the halfway point of the song — “came from a childhood memory of being ill: I would hear the murmuring of a large crowd accompanied by a visual image of a line-drawing (rather like a Patrick Caulfield painting, I’ve since realised) in which all the objects switched rapidly between being smooth and bulbous, and then thin and wrinkly,” Cocker continued. “It used to absolutely terrify me.”
The frontman wasn’t the only one to have an eerie memory that can be tied to “Save the Whale”. “Weirdly enough, Jason [Buckle] (our electronics wizard) said he had a similar childhood experience except he used to see a teapot surrounded by psychedelic outlines of itself,” explained Cocker. “Emma (our violinist and backing vocalist) found herself singing, ‘Smooth World, Wrinkly World’ as a lullaby to her 18 month-old daughter the other night.”
Check out the new single below via a video Cocker made at home while on lockdown. It’s comprised of live concert photos of the group from the last two years.
After a few release date shuffles due to COVID-19, Beyond the Pale is officially due out July 17th via Rough Trade Records. The effort marks the first-ever full-length for Jarv Is… and Cocker’s first since 2009’s Further Complications.
