Jarvis Cocker

The pairing of foppish pop ironist Jarvis Cocker with producer Steve Albini, a reactionary bulwark of rock authenticity, reads like a blueprint for disaster. But look harder: Both Cocker’s now-disbanded Pulp and Albini’s own groups (Big Black, Shellac) used stylized, grandiose music to magnify their frontmen’s vengefulness and sexual anxiety. Whether or not the principals noticed this common ground, the results are hard to argue with: Caustic and concise, Further Complications is far more focused than Cocker’s 2006 solo debut.

Albini lives to document crack live bands, and Cocker has one, built around bassist (and Pulp holdover) Steve Mackey and guitarists Tim McCall and Martin Craft. “Caucasian Blues” and the near-instrumental “Pilchard” are merely heavy for heavy’s sake, but the full-bore approach pays off on the sax-stoked “Homewrecker” and the tense, almost metallic title track, which begins with the singer’s overdue birth (“…in no great rush to join the rest of mankind”) and only gets nastier: “You want to suffer? Go to a rock show.”

The barrage relaxes on “Slush” and the piano-led “Hold Still,” but Cocker’s self-lacerating wit cuts through. On lead single “Angela,” the fortysomething singer drools ineffectually over a 24-year-old, while the plastic-soul workout “Leftovers” is well stocked with unlikely pickup lines: “I come to you with guilt and self-loathing…a vampire who faints at the sight of blood.” It’s a comic Casanova act that masks hard-won wisdom about aging and desire. Cocker may sing, “I never said I was deep,” but someone else might beg to differ.—Franklin Bruno

Buy Further Complications on Amazon.com | Buy it on BN.com

Jarvis Cocker plays Terminal 5 July 30.

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